Google has released another wave of artificial intelligence (AI) technology to accelerate a year-long makeover of its search engine that is changing the way people get information and altering the flow of internet traffic to websites.
The next phase outlined at Google’s annual developers conference includes releasing a new “AI mode” option in the US.
The feature makes interacting with Google’s search engine more like having a conversation with an expert capable of answering questions on just about any topic imaginable.
AI mode is being offered to anyone in the US just two and a half months after the company began testing. The decision to make AI mode broadly available after a relatively short test period reflects Google’s confidence in the technology.
Google is also feeding its latest AI model, Gemini 2.5, into its search algorithms and will soon begin testing other AI features, such as the ability to automatically buy concert tickets and conduct searches through live video feeds.
The expansion builds upon a transformation that Google began a year ago with the introduction of conversational summaries called “AI overviews” that have been increasingly appearing at the top of its results page and eclipsing its traditional rankings of web links.
About 1.5 billion people now regularly engage with “AI overviews,” according to Google, and most users are now entering longer and more complex queries.
Google executives predicted AI overviews would lead to more searches and ultimately more clicks to other sites but it hasn’t worked out that way so far, according to the findings of search optimization firm BrightEdge.
Click-through rates from Google’s search results have declined by nearly 30% during the past year, according to BrightEdge’s recently released study, which said this may have happened because people are becoming increasingly satisfied with AI overviews.
And Google’s latest developments may lead to further legal challenges. The rapid rise of AI alternatives has emerged as a theme in legal proceedings that could force Google to dismantle parts of its internet empire after a federal judge last year declared its search engine to be an illegal monopoly.
