Looks like Google is doubling down on AI-centric search despite a rocky, glue-pizza-marred rollout last year. At Google I/O 2025, the company announced “AI Mode” for search that greatly expands what it started with AI Overviews. According to Google, “AI Mode,” which is available in Labs starting Tuesday, “expands what AI Overviews can do with more advanced reasoning and thinking and multimodal capabilities.” In plain English, that means a lot more Gemini in your search.
Specifically, Google says AI Mode will be able to answer “your toughest questions” and can be used to go more in-depth, asking follow-ups and providing “helpful web links.” AI Mode is based on a custom version of Gemini 2.0, according to Google, and uses real-time sources like the Knowledge Graph—Google’s own database of people, places, and things—to pull data as well as (of course) shopping data. In practice, Google says AI Mode can be used to compare products with queries like, “What’s the difference in sleep tracking features between a smart ring, smartwatch, and tracking mat?” or “What happens to your heart rate during deep sleep?” and will conduct research for you by leveraging multiple sources across the web.
AI Mode is a total reimagining of Search — an end-to-end AI experience with more advanced reasoning. Early testers have been asking much longer queries, 2-3x the length of traditional searches.
AI Mode is rolling out to everyone in the U.S., starting today. 🎉#GoogleIO pic.twitter.com/xGELAnY1tM
— Google (@Google) May 20, 2025
This all sounds well and good on the surface, but it’s worth noting that Google’s previous attempts at AI-forward search haven’t exactly worked out as intended. Its AI Overviews were rocky to say the least and ended up peddling straight-up misinformation. In one particularly egregious instance, Google’s AI search even recommended that someone try putting glue on their pizza to get the cheese to stick. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that’s not really the type of next-gen search prowess we’ve been waiting for. For what it’s worth, Google at least gave some lip service, however indirect, to fixing those problems in its explanation of AI mode.
“AI Mode is rooted in our core quality and ranking systems, and we’re also using novel approaches with the model’s reasoning capabilities to improve actuality,” Google said in a statement. “We aim to show an AI-powered response as much as possible, but in cases where we don’t have high confidence in helpfulness and quality, the response will be a set of web search results.”
And that’s always kind of the problem with AI search, or sometimes AI in general, isn’t it? We want it to make our lives easier or get us to the truth faster, but we’re not quite at the point of being able to trust it fully yet. Web search, even without generative AI hallucinating facts or trying to serve up glue pizza, is already a messy thing that often falls victim to bias and misinformation, and until those problems are solved (given that they can be solved), I’m going to assume AI Mode or any other kind of AI search is going to contend with the same pitfalls. I’m hopeful, though, because web search does need to get better, and if I can find more reliable, useful information faster with the help of AI, I’ll be the first adopter. So, you’re up, AI Mode! Time to get in the kitchen and show us if you’re a less toxic pizza chef than your predecessor.
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