Google has officially announced Google AI Mode, after hearing rumors about it for months and then seeing leaked screenshots of it a few weeks ago. Google said AI mode gives you more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so you can get help with even your toughest questions.
What Is AI Mode
AI Mode is a Google search labs experiment that you have to opt into and Google has to approve you. Right now, it is rolling out to Google One AI Premium subscribers first, so it might take a while for you all to see it. Then when you gain access to it, you should be able to see an AI Mode tab under the search bar.
How To Access AI Mode
Here are the three ways to access it but you first need to be accepted into the Google Search Labs experiment for AI Mode:
(1) Go to www.google.com, enter a question in the Search bar, and tap the “AI Mode” tab
below the Search bar.
(2) Go directly to the AI Mode tab on Google Search at: google.com/aimode.
(3) In the Google app, tap the AI Mode icon below the Search bar on the home screen.
Many believe (including me) this is how AI should work in Google Search, unlike where if you don’t want AI Overviews, you can click on the web only tab. Having a dedicated AI mode tab is great.
What AI Mode Looks Like
Here is what it looks like on mobile:
Here is what it looks like on desktop:
How AI Mode Works
Google told me that AI Mode looks at real-time information from the web and from Google, this includes facts from the Google Knowledge Graph, information about the real-world, and shopping data for billions of products (Google Shopping Graph).
AI Mode uses a “query fan-out” technique, “issuing multiple related searches concurrently across subtopics and multiple data sources and then brings those results together to provide an easy-to-understand response,” Google told me.
AI Mode supports multimodal searching, meaning querying through through text, voice, or images.
Google also posted this detailed PDF document on how AI Mode works.
Links In AI Mode
When it comes to showing links to publishers and websites, Google said AI Mode prominently surfaces relevant links to help people find web pages and content they may not have discovered before. Those responses and links will likely different from those of AI Overviews, because they use different models.
Google also said it is training the models to intelligently determine when and how to link and best present information. “For example, teaching the model to decide when to include hyperlinks in the response if it’s likely that the user may want to take action or finish a task on a website (e.g. booking tickets),” Google told me.
Search Console & AI Mode
An no, don’t expect Google to show us any information on this via Google Search Console. Google told me, when I asked, “We currently don’t have anything to share about the reporting tools for this experiment, but will let you know if that changes.”
Control AI Mode With Robots
Google updated its directives they added:
(1) In the nosnippet section they wrote:
Do not show a text snippet or video preview in the search results for this page. A static image thumbnail (if available) may still be visible, when it results in a better user experience. This applies to all forms of search results (at Google: web search, Google Images, Discover, AI Overviews, AI Mode) and will also prevent the content from being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode.
(2) In the max-snippet: [number] section they wrote:
Use a maximum of [number] characters as a textual snippet for this search result. (Note that a URL may appear as multiple search results within a search results page.) This does not affect image or video previews. This applies to all forms of search results (such as Google web search, Google Images, Discover, Assistant, AI Overviews, AI Mode) and will also limit how much of the content may be used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode. However, this limit does not apply in cases where a publisher has separately granted permission for use of content. For instance, if the publisher supplies content in the form of in-page structured data or has a license agreement with Google, this setting does not interrupt those more specific permitted uses. This rule is ignored if no parseable [number] is specified.
When Will AI Mode Fully Roll Out
When will this more broadly roll out? I don’t know. I mean, it looks like Google is not the only one doing this. I mean, this works a lot more like ChatGPT Search, Perplexity and the beta Copilot Search from Microsoft Bing.
There is also a whole lot of comments from Google saying this is an experiment, it won’t be perfect, expect weird things and expect it to keep getting better. But Google did a ton of testing, Google has a ton of fail safes in place, but you know…
Videos On AI Mode
Here is a short YouTubey style video I made on this news:
Here is someone who has been using Perplexity exclusively and has early access to AI Mode in Google and he loves it:
Forum discussion at X.