Forbes launched a beta version of a generative AI search platform built with Google Cloud to provide personalized searches for readers. 

The platform is called Adelaide — named after the wife of Forbes’ founder, B.C. Forbes. Readers can ask specific questions or input general topic areas and get recommended articles about their query, along with a summarized answer to whatever they asked... as long as it’s within Forbes’ coverage scope. Adelaide trained on Forbes stories but only covered the past 12 months of its news and list coverage. 

Vadim Supitskiy, chief digital and information officer at Forbes, said the publication wanted to increase engagement with both search and its stories. 

“Engagement with search has been pretty standard for us, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to innovate using generative AI and boost the number of users that look for information,” Supitskiy told The Verge.

Readers can tap the Adelaide button on the website (or go directly to the Adelaide beta page) and ask questions like “Who is the richest person in Nebraska?” Using the publication’s library of news stories, opinion pieces, and lists, Adelaide will create a summary about Warren Buffett and then show related articles the user may want to read. In a demo, Supitskiy also showed people can continue the conversation with Adelaide with follow-up questions. The platform remembers the previous question and will surface more information about Buffett and different articles. 

Other media companies have begun rolling out generative AI tools, separate from the AI-generated articles that have recently caused controversy. In August, Macworld, PCWorld, Tech Advisor, and TechHive added an AI chatbot to their sites, allowing readers to ask questions and get answers based on their articles. 

Supitskiy said that while Adelaide is the first generative AI tool built by Forbes, it is not the first time the publication worked with AI. It created Bertie in 2019, an AI-powered tool that provided Forbes journalists with suggestions about their writing style. Both Adelaide and Bertie were built using tools from Google Cloud. Supitskiy said Forbes made Adelaide on top of Google’s generative AI APIs. It also released ForbesOne in 2021, a machine learning platform that helps create personalized recommendations for users. 

Forbes has high hopes for Adelaide, and while it doesn’t have a timeline yet for a full rollout, Supitskiy wants to eventually expand Adelaide’s knowledge base to its entire archive, dating back to 1917, when Forbes magazine was founded.