Google enhances Search with new AI Mode and more AI Overviews

The AI-ification of Google Search is accelerating: the firm stated on Wednesday that it would begin providing AI Overviews for even more types of enquiries, and that users all across the world, including those who are not logged in, will begin to see them as well.

Google will also be introducing an even more ambitious AI search tool. It's called AI Mode, and it integrates a search-centric chatbot into the core Google experience. It's essentially Google's version of Perplexity or ChatGPT Search. For the time being, AI Mode is only available to Google One AI Premium customers, who must also enable it in the Labs area of Search.

The premise behind AI Mode is that many users who search Google would want to see primarily AI-generated results. If you input a query in AI Mode (a tab in the search website or the Google app, such as Images or News), you'll receive a generated answer based on everything in Google's search index, with a few supporting links peppered throughout. The user experience is similar to Gemini or any other chatbot, but you're dealing with a Search-specific model, which means it can access real-time data and communicate directly with the web.

AI Mode is simply the latest indication of how crucial AI-generated content has become to Google Search, and how confident the firm is in its models' abilities, despite well-documented troubles with rock eating and sticky pizza. "What we're finding from people who are using AI Overviews is that they're really bringing different kinds of questions to Google," says Robby Stein, a VP of product on the Search team. "They're more complex questions, that may have been a little bit harder before." Google is introducing the Gemini 2.0 model to AI Overviews, which Stein claims will make Google more useful for questions on maths, code, and anything else that requires more advanced reasoning.

As Google delves deeper into AI search, it appears to be moving away from linking to websites—and the fundamental value transaction it made with the internet. Stein insists such is not the case. "We observe that with AI Overviews, users will understand the context and click in. And when they click in and visit websites, they spend more time on them. They're arguably better clients for those websites since they've previously received context." He believes AI Overviews and AI Mode drive new users to Google for new experiences rather than cannibalising their current behaviour.

According to Stein, AI Mode is not a Trojan horse for a total search makeover because people rely on Google for far too many things to replace with a chatbot. But there's no doubting that Google's AI initiatives are beginning to totally surround, and rapidly affect, everything about what happens when you search.