Last year, Google introduced AI Overviews for Search, but it faced significant backlash due to the mistakes made by its AI. However, Google has since reworked the feature and is now rolling out a new version powered by Gemini 2.0, its latest AI model. This update aims to improve the AI’s performance in handling complex questions related to coding, math, and multimodal requests. Additionally, AI Overviews can now be accessed by teenagers and users without a Google Account.
Introducing AI Mode
Google is currently testing AI Mode, a feature designed to cater to the needs of “power users” who want AI responses for their searches. AI Mode allows users to ask multi-part questions and provides advanced reasoning, thinking, and multimodal functions. It is presented as a separate tab in Search, resembling the user experience of ChatGPT or Gemini. By combining multiple searches into one, AI Mode delivers comprehensive answers, results, and summaries, citing the sources for each generation.
Credit: Google
AI Mode utilizes a “query fan-out” technique to generate results. It simultaneously searches for multiple related things and combines the results to provide a comprehensive response. The data points used by AI Mode include web results, Google’s Knowledge Graph, and shopping data.
For example, Google demonstrates AI Mode’s approach with the query: “What’s the difference in sleep tracking features between a smart ring, smartwatch, and tracking mat?” The AI develops a multi-step plan to conduct searches and adjusts the plan based on the results obtained.
However, AI Mode is still a work in progress, and Google acknowledges that it may not always provide accurate results. In such cases, users may only see web links if the AI deems its response insufficient.
While it remains to be seen how useful AI Mode will be compared to Gemini or traditional Google Search, I will reserve judgment until I can personally test the feature. Based on my current experience with AI, I anticipate that I may prefer the conventional Search method.
How to Try Google’s AI Mode
If you are a Google One AI Premium subscriber, you will have the opportunity to try out AI Mode in Labs as one of the first users. For non-subscribers, joining the waitlist is necessary. Simply sign into your Google Account and visit Google Labs. Under “Introducing the AI Mode Experiment,” select “Join waitlist” to confirm your interest in the feature.
