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AI Search Engine Race Just Got Intense with Google’s new “AI Mode” Feature
ByVishal V
Alphabet Inc’s Google launched a new feature called “AI mode” in its search engine on Wednesday via its official newsroom. This new feature is still in experimental phase and will be available only to Google One AI premium subscribers initially. Tech experts are calling this a strong move and what appears to be a direct take on popular AI search engines like Perplexity and OpenAi’s ChatGPT search.
This new AI search mode is an expansion of Google search’s existing “AI Overview” feature which was introduced last year. The goal and vision of this feature is to provide more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so that users can get help with the toughest of the toughest questions with the ability to ask follow-up questions and visit the source web links.
Additionally, Google also launched Gemini 2.0 for AI Overviews, available only in the US for now. The new Gemini 2.0 is much more advanced in its capabilities and can help with harder questions, related to coding, advanced math and multimodal queries. Google also said that “teens can now use AI Overviews”, and it no longer requires to sign in to get access.
Further extending on Gemini 2.0, a custom version of Gemini 2.0 is being used in experimental AI Mode. This custom version is particularly helpful for questions that need further exploration, comparisons and reasoning. Users will also be able to ask complex, multi-part questions and ask follow-ups to dig deeper.
As this is still in experiment, Google acknowledges that some responses may unintentionally appear and if they don’t have high confidence in the quality of the result, the response will be default set of web search results. Based on the feedback from the first phase, Google plans to address such types of challenges in the next phase with parallel work on new capabilities and updates such as visual responses with images and video and richer formatting. This announcement from google is a testament to the rapid pace at which AI is evolving and how quickly becoming a part of our daily lives.
