More AI Is Coming to Your Google Search Results (Whether You Want It or Not)

When Google rolled out AI Overviews for Search last year, it didn't go over so well. The company's AI made some pretty massive mistakes with its results, many of which went viral. In response, Google pulled back the feature, reworked it, and slowly reintroduced it to the masses. You've probably noticed.

Google is continuing its work of adding AI to Search—whether you want it or not. Since March, the company has been testing something called AI Mode. See, Google says that they've heard from "power users" that they are looking for AI responses from more of their Google searches. In response, AI Mode lets you ask the AI multi-part questions that offers more advanced reasoning, thinking, and multimodal (combination of text, images, and video) functions.

On paper, it sounds like a more complex AI Overview, but it's a bit more nuanced than that. AI Mode is its own tab in Search, that turns the UI into more of what you'd expect from ChatGPT or Gemini. Google says this experience is supposed to combine what would've taken multiple searches into one: You ask the AI something complicated, it reasons through it (showing its thinking along the way) and delivers a full answer with multiple results, claims, and summaries—citing its sources for each of its generations.

Credit: Google

Google says AI Mode uses a “query fan-out” technique to generate its results. Essentially, it searches for multiple related things at the same time, combining those results together into the response you see at the end. AI Mode pulls from many different data points for its results, including web results, Google's Knowledge Graph, and shopping data.

Google uses the following query to demonstrate this approach: “What's the difference in sleep tracking features between a smart ring, smartwatch and tracking mat?" AI Mode supposedly takes that multi-part question, develops a multi-step "plan" to conduct a number of searches to find the information, and changes that plan according to the results it returns.

New features coming to AI Mode in the future

Aside from rolling out the feature to all users, Google had some more AI Mode news to share at I/O. Most of the announcements are for features planned for the near future, but here's what you can expect from AI Mode down the line.

First, AI Mode is getting Gemini 2.5, Google's "most intelligent model," this week. Whether that's today or sometime this weekend, remains to be seen, but it'll be interesting to see how Gemini 2.5 affects AI Mode's performance—at least, as long as you've been using it with Gemini 2.0.

Then, there's Deep Search—similar to, but not quite the same as Deep Research. Deep Search takes the AI Mode model and dives deeper, running potentially hundreds of searches on your queries. Like Deep Research, Deep Search can generate a report for you based on its findings. (Google says this can be done in "just minutes.") AI Mode will be able to generate graphs and charts, as well, if it makes sense for the query.

Google is also adding agentic capabilities to AI Mode. "Agentic" is the current AI buzzword floating around these days, which basically covers any task the AI performs on your behalf. As such, agentic AI is a goal for many companies looking to turn AI assistants into real assistants. Whether or not you'll actually find these tools helpful is another thing altogether, but you can expect some agentic AI tools in AI Mode in the coming months. For example, you may be able to ask AI Mode to find you affordable tickets to a particular baseball game on a specific night, and not only will it pull up the links for you, it'll fill out all the necessary forms as well, so, in theory, you only need to confirm your purchase.

AI Mode will offer shopping features later this year, as well. Google says a shopping request will return a "Shopping Graph," which can pull from more than 50 billion product listings, in the hopes of showing you products relevant to your requests. If it's an article of clothing, Google will let you try it on virtually.

AI Mode will also be able to pull from your past searches, as well as your Google apps (starting with Gmail), if you opt-in. The idea is to show you more relevant results based on what you've done in the past and what you like.

How to try AI Mode

AI Mode is no longer just an experimental feature for Google Labs users: Following Google I/O 2025, AI Mode is rolling out to everyone in the U.S. As such, the next time you go to Google's homepage, or open the Google app on your phone, you may see the new "AI Mode" tab on the right side of the search bar. (Some users saw AI Mode replace the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, but hopefully that was a now-completed experiment on Google's part.)

To use AI Mode, just click the button. Google will offer suggested prompts, but you can type out any query you have. You can enter the same types of searches you normally would, but give a multi-part question a try. (Google's promotional materials encourage you to ask "10 questions in one.")

If you've ever used a chatbot's web search, whether that be Google's Gemini or ChatGPT, this will be a familiar experience. Answers are broken down into sections, with the usual AI bullet points and links to individual sources. You may also get some interactive elements: If you've asked about a specific location, for example, you may see an in-line Google Maps window.