Google announced on Wednesday that it is expanding its AI features to accompany its Search platform by incorporating an upgraded version of AI Overviews along with an experimental AI Mode.
AI Overviews, one of Google’s popular Search features, is powered by Gemini 2.0 advanced capabilities to serve more than a billion users around the world.
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The new AI Mode expands on what AI Overviews can do with more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so you can get help with even your toughest questions. It allows users to ask questions, and receive AI-powered responses, with the option to go further with follow-up questions and helpful web links.
Using a custom version of Gemini 2.0, AI Mode is particularly helpful for questions that need further exploration, comparisons and reasoning. It allows for more nuanced questions that may previously have taken multiple searches, and get a helpful AI-powered response with links.
Google’s AI Mode brings together advanced model capabilities with Google’s best-in-class information systems, and it’s built right into Search. It allows users to access high quality web content, as well as to tap into fresh, real-time sources like the Knowledge Graph, info about the real world, and shopping data for billions of products. It uses a “query fan-out” technique, let users perform multiple related searches simultaneously across subtopics and multiple data sources and then bring those results together to provide an easy-to-understand response, allowing access to a greater breadth and depth of information.
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As of now, AI mode is only available to users with Labs access. Google has also addressed safety concerns with a caveat that it is a new feature at an early stage, and it might now always “get things right.”
Google also said they have been testing AI Mode “extensively with trusted testers and conducted rigorous internal evaluations using methods we’ve been honing for decades in Search.” It is expected that Google would learn from real-user usage and feedback, and quickly respond and adapt AI Mode.