As OpenAI goes into “Code Red” citing competitive pressures, Google announced it has begun testing a new feature that will integrate AI Overview and AI Mode in Search. This means that on top of your search results, you’ll typically be provided with an AI-generated snapshot of important information about your topic or question, and you can dig deeper by asking follow-up questions in a conversational interface.
Google calls this conversation feature AI mode. Released in May of this year for users in the US and in August of this year for users around the world, it enabled chat interaction with Google’s Gemini AI in an experience similar to ChatGPT.
However, accessing previous experiences required us to think ahead about what types of questions we were prepared to search for. If it’s a more traditional search query, or one that you expect to get an answer to right away, you’ll probably stick to typing it into the search box as you normally would.
However, if you want to ask more questions or explore a topic in more detail, you can instead[AI モード]You need to click on the tab to start chatting with the AI.
Google now wants to test whether it makes sense to differentiate between the two experiences. After all, the process of seeking information can often lead to a desire to know more. You may have thought you started with a simple query, but found yourself digging deeper into a topic.
The new test announced Monday will allow users to “seamlessly go deeper” in AI mode directly from the search results page, Google said. The test is rolling out to users around the world, but is only available on mobile devices for now.
The rollout comes alongside an internal push at Google’s AI rival OpenAI, which has slowed other products to focus on improving the chatbox experience. Thanks to the release of Gemini’s Nano Banana image model and other Gemini improvements, Gemini has grown to over 650 million monthly users as of November. Integrating Conversation Mode and AI Overviews, which has 2 billion monthly users, could give Gemini an edge in consumer adoption.
“You don’t have to think about where or how to ask a question,” said Robby Stein, Google’s vice president of search products, in a post on X. Instead, users will still get an AI overview as a helpful starting point, but will then be able to ask conversational follow-up questions in AI mode from the same screen, he explained.
“This brings us closer to our vision for search: Ask any question you care about, no matter how long or complex, and find exactly what you need,” Stein wrote.
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