Search Engines vs AI Assistants: What’s the Difference?

Search engines help you find information that already exists on the web.

• They scan billions of webpages and create an index — like a giant digital library.
• When you search, they retrieve relevant webpages from that index.
• You choose which sources to trust and read the content yourself.

Search engines like Google do use AI — but their main job is still retrieval, not generation. The output is always a list of links to real webpages you can visit yourself.

Looking for academic sources? Learn more in our Search and Discovery Tools guide.

AI assistants create text by predicting likely word patterns based on massive training data. Many now also integrate web search, allowing them to fetch and incorporate live information into their generated responses.

They can:

• Generate new text — summaries, explanations, or answers — based on patterns they’ve learned

• Analyse uploaded documents like PDFs and images

• Provide internet access (as of 2025, even free versions of ChatGPT and Claude do this by default)

• Offer links or citations, though these still need to be checked carefully

Abertay’s university licence for Copilot Chat also includes secure, web-grounded access. Remember: these tools still generate text from patterns, not lists of webpages.

Training data here simply means the huge collection of texts that the AI has “read” during development to learn language patterns. This can include academic papers, but also less reliable sources like blogs or forums.

Example: A Psychology student might use ChatGPT to explain a complex theory in plain English before looking it up in LibrarySearch for citable sources.

Important: Even when an AI assistant has web access, it’s using that information to help generate text — not to retrieve and display full webpages like a search engine does.

Yes — the lines are less clear than they used to be. Many modern tools now mix search and generation. For example:

• Google AI Overviews — generate short summaries from web content.

• Google’s conversational search features — can break down complex questions, plan steps, and return synthesized answers with links.

• Copilot Chat — available to Abertay staff and students, combines secure web access with conversational generation.

• Perplexity — searches the web in real-time while generating conversational responses with source citations.

• Academic platforms — tools like Statista Research AI  generate short summaries from licensed data, alongside the usual search results.

What this means for you:

• These tools may look like search engines, but they are still generating explanations rather than just showing raw results.

• They often blend live web results with training data.

• You still need to verify any claims or sources they provide.

The key question is: Can you trace and check the specific claims?

• With a search engine, you click through to evaluate sources directly.

• With an AI assistant (even a hybrid one), you’re trusting the tool’s interpretation and synthesis.

The bottom line: search engines retrieve, while AI assistants generate.

Tip: If you’re deciding which academic search tools to use — including Google Scholar, LibrarySearch, or subject databases — check out Search and Discovery Tools.

Example: you might use an AI Assistant to brainstorm ideas, then switch to LibrarySearch to find peer-reviewed research to evidence the results.

Tip: If accuracy really matters — like for assignments — don’t rely solely on AI. Check sources yourself using academic tools like LibrarySearch.  See Search and Discovery Tools for help choosing the right one.

Search engines and AI assistants differ not just in how they work, but also in the sources they use:

• Search engines retrieve only from indexed webpages, pointing you to live sites you can evaluate yourself

• AI assistants generate answers using two types of sources:

  • Training data (books, articles, websites, and datasets ingested during development)

  • Live web content accessed through built-in search features

This explains why:

• Search results are transparent lists of links

• AI outputs are blended, conversational answers that may be harder to trace

• Reproducibility is an issue: the same AI query may not always give the same answer

AI assistants may draw on academic material as well as less reliable sources like blogs or Reddit. However:

• Much academic and professional literature remains behind paywalls

• These tools mainly rely on open-access research and freely available web content

• Outputs often blend academic and non-academic material, without transparent, verifiable references

This is why AI-generated content (from tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot Chat) is not considered an academic source, even if it discusses academic topics. To access paywalled academic and professional literature, use LibrarySearch and subject databases provided by the University Library.

Bottom line: AI is a great assistant — but it doesn’t replace proper research. For essays or lab reports, you must reference published academic sources. In creative portfolios, you may use AI to brainstorm but must still evidence your design research. In professional fields such as Law, Nursing, or Engineering, specialist databases and official sources remain essential because AI assistants cannot access all required evidence. These practices also prepare you for Honours projects and postgraduate research.