Google ditches the waitlist for AI Mode in search. Now it's available for anyone to opt in.
Feeling nostalgic for the old days of dense, text-heavy search results? It's about to get worse. Google announced today that it's going deeper, ditching the waitlist for AI Mode in its search results and allowing anyone with the curiosity to opt in. It's still a Labs feature for now, but this is the beginning of what will become the new normal for Google search on the web and mobile.
AI Mode originally launched two months ago in a closed beta of sorts. It differs from the AI Overview you might have encountered recently in Google search. Rather than a summary of the findings, AI Mode is a separate tab that provides quick access to the Gemini chatbot, specifically within Google search. You can ask contextual follow-up questions and add to the query as needed. AI Mode will populate a sidebar with cards as its answers change, all of which refer to the sources from which it is pulling information.
AI Mode can tap into Google's Shopping Graph to help you find things to buy (I haven't tried it to see if it can help me get around tariffs yet) and localized data from Maps. I used it to get suggestions on what to do on an upcoming trip to LA. My question, edited to sound better than what I initially typed (you can see it in the screenshot below), was, "What kind of train and dinosaur fun can we have with my 5-year-old in Los Angeles?" AI Mode fetched related answers I wouldn't have thought to seek out myself, since I don't live in the area. It suggested activities like the scenic train ride in Griffith Park and a dinosaur exhibit at the Discovery Cube. It also gave me links to the mommy blogs that all had the same suggestions.
AI Mode will remain optional for people using Google Search for simple queries, although you'll still encounter the AI Overview. About a week ago, Google revealed in its first-quarter earnings results that it now has 1.5 billion users interacting with it. From the way Google is publicly promoting all this ahead of its annual developer conference, it's clear that AI has been officially solidified as a key component of Google's search product. If you're trying to avoid the AI experience, you'll have to go through great lengths to disable AI Overview or find another search engine to do your bidding. (DuckDuckGo and Kagi are good places to start.)
