Google is turning Search into an AI chatbot with 'AI mode'

AI has begun to replace the search as we know of it, as Google at the I/O announced the “ AI Mode .” Available to all US users starting today, CEO Sundar Pichai calls the AI mode, a “total reimagining of search” that will transform’s Google’s headlining product from a link directory into an interactive AI assistant .

"Search is bringing AI to more people than any other product in the world," Pichai said during the company's annual I/O developer conference, highlighting Google's 8.5 billion daily queries as a massive distribution advantage over competitors.

AI Mode will provide users with a chatbot-style experience directly within Google Search, allowing them to ask follow-up questions and receive AI-generated responses rather than just links to websites. The feature was previously available only to limited test users through Google's Labs program.

"We launched AI Overviews last year at I/O, and since then there's been a profound shift in how people are using Google Search," said Liz Reid, VP and Head of Search at Google. "People are coming to Google to ask more of their questions, including more complex, longer and multimodal questions."

The end of blue links
The new AI Mode is a fundamental shift from Google's traditional approach of displaying webpages in response to queries. Instead, users can have conversational interactions similar to ChatGPT or even Perplexity, with the system providing synthesized answers and allowing follow-up questions.

"The search results page was a construct," explained Liz Reid, who leads Google's search team, suggesting that the way people have used Google for two decades was largely a response to the web's structure.

AI Overviews was beginning of this end, and the AI Mode is coming as users are engaging with artificially generated overviews more than blue links. "In our biggest markets like the U.S. and India, AI Overviews is driving over 10% increase in usage of Google for the types of queries that show AI Overviews," Reid stated.

Nick Fox, who runs Google's knowledge and information products, views this shift as natural evolution: "In the past, search would have been limited to, 'if there's a piece of information out there, I can deliver it back to someone.'" He emphasized that Google's AI models now "have the ability to reason, to transform, to connect dots across, to synthesize, to do all these other things that go beyond information retrieval to this notion of intelligence."

From search to becoming an agent
Beyond AI Mode, Google also showed off its " Project Mariner ," which can autonomously perform tasks like booking travel or researching topics. The company also announced " Deep Search " for comprehensive research and "Search Live" for real-time visual assistance.

However, there’s still sometime before the blue links disappear altogether. Fox notes that the Google Search still remains the “best experience” for most users, and at least for now, the AI mode will live in a separate tab, and users could use as they like. Although, the features sooner or later will gradually migrate to the traditional search experience.

"In three years," Fox predicted, "we will all think about and use Search in a way completely unrecognizable to today's product."

Google plans to first introduce these advanced capabilities in Labs for power users before gradually integrating successful features into the core Search experience.