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Google AI

Google Is Rolling Out AI Mode To Everyone In the US (engadget.com) 40

Posted by BeauHD from the new-era-of-Search dept.
Google has unveiled a major overhaul of its search engine with the introduction of A.I. Mode -- a new feature that works like a chatbot, enabling users to ask follow-up questions and receive detailed, conversational answers. Announced at the I/O 2025 conference, the feature is now being rolled out to all Search users in the U.S. Engadget reports: Google first began previewing AI Mode with testers in its Labs program at the start of March. Since then, it has been gradually rolling out the feature to more people, including in recent weeks regular Search users. At its keynote today, Google shared a number of updates coming to AI Mode as well, including some new tools for shopping, as well as the ability to compare ticket prices for you and create custom charts and graphs for queries on finance and sports.

For the uninitiated, AI Mode is a chatbot built directly into Google Search. It lives in a separate tab, and was designed by the company to tackle more complicated queries than people have historically used its search engine to answer. For instance, you can use AI Mode to generate a comparison between different fitness trackers. Before today, the chatbot was powered by Gemini 2.0. Now it's running a custom version of Gemini 2.5. What's more, Google plans to bring many of AI Mode's capabilities to other parts of the Search experience.

Looking to the future, Google plans to bring Deep Search, an offshoot of its Deep Research mode, to AI Mode. [...] Another new feature that's coming to AI Mode builds on the work Google did with Project Mariner, the web-surfing AI agent the company began previewing with "trusted testers" at the end of last year. This addition gives AI Mode the ability to complete tasks for you on the web. For example, you can ask it to find two affordable tickets for the next MLB game in your city. AI Mode will compare "hundreds of potential" tickets for you and return with a few of the best options. From there, you can complete a purchase without having done the comparison work yourself. [...] All of the new AI Mode features Google previewed today will be available to Labs users first before they roll out more broadly.

Google Is Rolling Out AI Mode To Everyone In the US More | Reply

Google Is Rolling Out AI Mode To Everyone In the US

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  • Goodbye internet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @05:34PM (#65391631)
    I'm dealing with a fixit ticket in the US, Google and Microsoft both successfully hallucinated steps I'd need to do for this in their little AI bullshit windows. But fuck accuracy and fuck the very existence of the rest of the internet, when a company has a chance to sell marginally more advertising by keeping users on their platform for even longer they take it!

    • On the whole, I find Gemini and Copilot useful. Yesterday, I used Copilot to help diagnose a problem with notifications on an Android phone my father uses. It came up with three suggestions, all valid, and one of them actually fixed his issue. AI has been a *huge* time saver for me.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This is illegal in Germany.

      • In my experience, all it does regurgitate the contents of a page near the top of the rankings. Nothing new, insightful or anything I wouldn't have easily found without it.

        Summary: it's useless.

        • Correction, page*s*. It summarizes *numerous* pages near the top of the rankings. Each summary typically cites half a dozen references. What's new is, you don't have to click all those pages yourself.

      • Re:Goodbye internet (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SoftwareArtist ( 1472499 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @07:43PM (#65391883)

        I just used Gemini to research a subject. It helpfully provided lots of detailed information, backed up with citations to specific papers. Just one problem: almost all the papers were hallucinated. And the one paper that actually exists doesn't say what the AI summary claimed it says.

      • Useful - for now (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday May 21, 2025 @03:42AM (#65392453)

        Yesterday, I used Copilot to help diagnose a problem with notifications on an Android phone my father uses. It came up with three suggestions, all valid

        That's great it worked today.

        But those three suggestions came from somewhere. A somewhere that probably relied on ads to keep up the site.

        There was no ad viewed though, since all you saw was the suggestion. So in a year, maybe shorter, maybe longer, that site that had the recommendation you found goes away.

        And then the next issue with notifications comes along, and no-one writes up a description of how to fix it since they can't make any money from it any more.

        What then? Where will recommendations come from when the sources for summaries of fixes all dry up?

        • Those sites that are buried in ads? I will not mourn their loss. Maybe sites will have to find a new way to fund themselves. Money has a way of finding a way to flow. I'm not worried about the loss of some of the ad-driven economy of the current iteration of the internet. The new iteration will end up being not that different from this one, I'm sure.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 0xG ( 712423 )

          What then? Where will recommendations come from when the sources for summaries of fixes all dry up?

          The recommendations will just be hallucinated of course.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0xG ( 712423 )

      Don't forget to login to google first, so that they can track you more effectively.

  • They can try but if I don't use any of their products then they ain't rolling it out to everyone in the us.

  • If the user can criticize or correct the search bot when it inevitably produces incorrect information, then maybe they have something.

    And yes I realize this could be abused, terribly. But so are the users, er I mean product.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      If the user can criticize or correct the search bot when it inevitably produces incorrect information,

      Then you'll end up training it for Google. It's bad enough that we have to beta test software for Microsoft.

  • Can I setup an HTTP proxy or something that black lists the related Google API urls?

  • I get to avoid shitty search results AND hallucinations.

  • Imagine how much more power this is going to require?

  • People still use Google? Their AI is total shit. Now you get dogshit search along with dogshit AI.

    • Yep, Google is still my go-to search engine. Sure beats Bing, which powers Duck Duck Go and Brave search. The AI piece makes *any* of those search engines usable, by summarizing the results, freeing me from having to click on endless web links to find the one that's actually relevant.

      • It's very much debatable if Google is still better. Since I started using DDG more in the past year (about 50/50 split with Google now) I'm starting to think the preference for Google is just irrational brand loyalty, the logo and the layout making you feel like you're getting the best search. I'm really struggling to think of a search this year where one outperformed the other. Probably I will do more head-to-head comparisons next time I need to search.

        Not sure if Bing improved at all - but Google search h

      • I remember being able to look up technical details on google without my search being autocorrected halfway through the process, not in the way I specified that I wanted it treated based on their documented search syntax... I don't even know if the syntax they have listed is valid, because nothing seems to stop it getting overridden these days.

        They have undermined their core business for people who actually do work necessary work, and it's really not helpful having my searches constantly reinterpreted into s

        • I remember when they made that change too, and it baffled me, until I realized that their new goal was to abuse their users and that they were starting to decline. That was around the time of Google Buzz, if I recall, when Search started to act like it knew better than you (even though the results were always worse).

          Also don't get me started on them buying DejaNews, integrating it with Google Groups, and then killing it--Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

    • Google is still marginally better at DDG / Bing at finding relevant answers to very precise, very obscure technical issues or error messages. Other than that, I never use it.

      My search engines of choice are:

      85% DDG for general and technical search.
      10% Google for technical search when DDG fails.
      5% Yandex for porn - don't bother with DDG first, Yandex knows smut best.

    • People still use Google? Their AI is total shit. Now you get dogshit search along with dogshit AI.

      Heh. So yesterday I searched for 'Trump obese' and Google's AI results gave me a paragraph about how he's technically just overweight. I then searched for 'Trump dementia' and it returned "An AI Overview is not available for this search". So... you're getting curated dogshit AI.

      * Glad I took screengrabs, those same searches today aren't triggering the AI overview.

  • If it can't do that, don't want it. Also, if it can do that, still don't want it.

    • If it can't do that, don't want it. Also, if it can do that, still don't want it.

      I don't either, but let them waste their energy on it.

  • all prices will rise (Score:3)

    by JeffSh ( 71237 ) <jeffslashdot AT m0m0 DOT org> on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @06:20PM (#65391725)

    with agent based purchasing, it will increase active competition for all resources. everything will go up in price because of it, wrapped in a tool that is supposed to help you find the least expensive option. what a grift.

  • So, no thanks. I'd like a way to disable it, or a new search engine. How's DuckDuckGo these days?

  • AI seems good for search inquiries (Score:3)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @08:00PM (#65391917)
    DDG has an AI assistant on their search page now and the few times I used it for information it was accurate and useful. I know AI isn't perfect but I think it will get better and maybe it will make computers and the internet more useful and as an optimist I want to hope it does. And maybe someday the spellcheck I use will get better with AI built in it

    • it was accurate and useful

      How would you know? And if you had to go to the source to check it, why not just skip the AI bullshit and start at the source by clicking on a traditional search result?

    • It does the job okay from time to time, but in any case it's just Chat-gpt.
  • I love that this article comes immediately after "Chicago Sun-Times AI Writes Listicle Hallucination". This is exactly why I gave up Google as a search engine, the AI garbage is just too annoying.

  • How do you turn the damn thing off (Score:3)

    by jhecht ( 143058 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @09:05PM (#65391991)
    How do I turn it off, or delete Google from my machine and my life?
  • This is Google trying to do "something" to stop the bleeding. I don't Google anymore, I use AI because it's a faster way to get answers. But that means Google doesn't show me ads, can't target me with cookies and basically their famous algorithm is rendered useless. This is terrifying for them, because their whole revenue model is based on search and their monopoly around it, now they are losing ground.

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