Google’s preliminary testing showed that AI mode queries are twice as long as usual searches.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google will start testing a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered search mode that allows people to ask multipart questions.
The new feature is available to Google One AI Premium subscribers. To access it, click on the “AI Mode” tab next to the Images and Maps options on the results page for any search query.
Google One AI Premium is available at $19.99 a month and offers additional cloud storage and exclusive access to certain AI features.
It is a subtle twist in Google’s business model, which is known for offering its best products for free.
Robby Stein, vice president of product for Google search, stated in the interview that the new feature runs on several related searches in the background, guessing the subtopics the user would be interested in and providing a cohesive answer summarising the multiple lines of inquiry.
With AI Mode, users can view more than an AI summary with links hyperlinked to the website. They added a search bar to ask follow-up questions instead of the ten blue links.
Google stated that AI Mode is powered by a customized version of its Gemini 2.0, which has reasoning capabilities that enable it to give better answers to complex inquiries.
Currently, Google shows summaries through AI overviews. It is increasingly showing up on top of traditional hyperlinks. It started putting ads on AI Overview last May.
AI Model can handle text, images, and videos and provides you with information on the internet and in all of Google’s new information systems.
AI Mode will run in a separate tab from the main search landing page, which Stein claimed would be ideal for users asking complex queries that are not ideal for traditional keyword searches.
The company stated that they would open up the feature for teenagers.
According to Stein, Google’s preliminary testing showed that AI mode queries are twice as long as usual searches.
Alphabet’s primary source of income is through search-related advertising. But, it is facing the biggest threat to its core business in years from AI rivals led by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which added search capabilities to ChatGPT last October.
AI Mode comes almost a year after Google introduced generative AI to its primary search engine, with the product known as AI Overviews. AI Mode will be available to users enrolled to test experimental features. They have attempted for AI Mode to ensure they are relevant to its core business as OpenAI and other companies have targeted its market share.
Google’s investment chief, Ruth Porat, stated that the company’s biggest bet is integrating AI into search.
The US firm hesitated to make significant changes to its search since it generated almost 60% of its income in the last quarter. However, the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT created doubts in Google’s minds about whether using a simple text box to search the open internet was the most effective method.
It introduced the concept of asking the AI system for answers in a conventional fashion. Since then, many AI-powered search businesses, such as Perplexity and Anthropic, have entered the market to provide tough competition.
The US firm continues to have a competitive advantage since it has access to content across the web, the shopping data of billions of people, and its Knowledge Graph, a vast collection of information that has helped Google to provide people with relevant answers to their queries for years.
But, Google risks the danger of discouraging its users from visiting the websites that provide the content and bringing them revenue by summarising the internet information through artificial intelligence.
Stein stated that Google’s push for AI-powered search engines has caused concerns from web content creators. AI summaries would reduce traffic to their website as the users do not need to waste their time reading the entire blog article. Instead, they get the information quickly through an AI summary.
