Google Unveils Expanded AI Overviews and Experimental AI Mode

Google said Wednesday (March 5) that it launched two updates for its artificial intelligence features: expanded AI Overviews and a limited, experimental offering called AI Mode.

“With our new AI features, people are using Google Search more than ever as they get help with new and more complex questions,” Robby Stein, vice president of product for Google Search, wrote in a Wednesday blog post. “AI Overviews are one of our most popular Search features — now used by more than a billion people — and we’re continuing to advance and improve the experience to make them even better.”

The newly launched Gemini 2.0 for AI Overviews is now available in the United States to help with harder questions like coding, advanced math and multimodal queries, according to the post.

This expanded AI Overviews provides faster and higher quality responses, shows AI Overviews more often for harder questions, is available to teens and no longer requires users to sign in to get access, the post said.

The new, experimental Search mode, AI Mode, which uses a custom version of Gemini 2.0, can help with nuanced questions, answer follow-up questions and provide relevant web links, according to the post.

AI Mode can access web content, shopping data and other real-time information; issue multiple related searches concurrently; and bring the results together in its response, per the post.

This enables AI Mode to answer queries like, per the post, “What’s the difference in sleep tracking features between a smart ring, smartwatch and tracking mat?”

AI Mode will be made available, beginning Wednesday, to Google One AI Premium subscribers who receive an invitation, per the post.

“We’ve been getting feedback internally and from trusted testers, and they’ve found AI Mode incredibly helpful — they particularly appreciate the speed, quality and freshness of responses,” Stein wrote in the post.

AI Overviews was launched in the U.S. in May to provide an AI-generated summary of information from several sources along with search results.

Google reported in August that this feature was leading users to visit a greater diversity of websites for help with complex questions and was providing higher-quality clicks for websites.

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