I work full time in this space and can tell you with 100% certainty that it won’t be one or another, but a combination of them (plus other tech like learning to rank).

A search system is always an ensemble of many parts that make up a quality experience. Generative AI will undoubtedly be a part of that from now on.

Look up the retriever/reader pattern to learn more about this. It’s a really interesting field and I’m really glad to see more people getting involved with search tech with the recent AI boom.

Edit: I should also shameless plug the book AI-Powered-Search on which I'm a contributing author. Just looking at the table of contents you can see how deep this subject goes, and how much more there is to learn! https://www.manning.com/books/ai-powered-search?a_aid=1&a_bi...