Google adds ‘AI Mode’ to Search, takes step beyond AI Overviews

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) revealed the next stage of integrating artificial intelligence into its popular search engine during its annual developers conference on Tuesday.

The new feature, called AI Mode, goes well beyond last year’s AI Overviews. It utilizes Gemini 2.5 for advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities for user questions.

It is available for testing today in Google Labs. It will be rolled out to all U.S. users in the next few weeks. A new tab called “AI Mode” will appear in Search and in the search bar in the Google app.

It can connect to other apps, and use your history to pull out personal context to customize AI for each individual user. Deep Search is also being added this summer. Google said, “It will be the most powerful tool for discovery than anything the web has ever seen.”

Rajan Patel, VP of engineering for Google Search, demonstrated AI Mode’s new analysis and data visualization, which is coming this summer as well, to dig deeper into Major League Baseball. He was eager to learn more about the torpedo bat. AI Mode was able to quickly gather the names of MLB players who use torpedo bats, and present their stats over the past two seasons, automatically generating a graph to easily digest the information.

Meanwhile, Vidhya Srinivasan, vice president and general manager of ads and commerce, revealed new shopping features contained in AI Mode.

“With AI Mode we are bringing a new level of intelligence,” she said. “It uses real-time data from the web and the latest Google Images and shopping information.”

AI Mode introduces a new “Try On” feature, which allows users to virtually try on clothes for free. It perceives shapes and depths more accurately for body mapping, and can show how the clothes will stretch and fold over the virtual wearer.

“AI Mode handles everything from inspiration to purchase,” Srinivasan said.

AI Mode is multimodal and can process text, audio, image and video.

Google continues to dominate the online search market, but it faces growing competition from AI companies such as OpenAI and Perplexity.