Google is making its AI Mode search tool available to many more people, but it’s also getting some upgrades. At first, AI Mode was only available through a waitlist in Google Labs, but now it is being offered to more people.
The company said that the waitlist for U.S. users is being removed right away, so anyone can try AI Mode within Labs. You can check to see if it’s available now on the official website. A small test is also happening where AI Mode will appear as its own tab in the main Google Search interface for a tiny percentage of U.S. users in the next few weeks. This slow rollout is meant to collect feedback from users and improve the tool before it is released to everyone.
AI Mode works differently from regular search engines because it gives answers created by AI for complicated questions, instead of just showing a list of website links. Unlike Google’s current AI Overviews, which give a summary between the search box and the web results, AI Mode acts more like a chatbot.
This puts it in direct competition with other AI-powered search tools like Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT search features, which also focus on AI answers instead of traditional links. However, Google says AI Mode is better because it can pull real-time web data and is connected to Google’s huge search database, making its answers more accurate and up-to-date than other chatbots. One major upgrade is the new visual place and product cards in AI Mode. These cards will be available over the next week.
Users can see ratings, reviews, and operating hours for local businesses like restaurants and stores. For products, users get real-time prices (including current deals), pictures, shipping details, and whether items are in stock nearby. This feature uses Google’s Shopping Graph, a database with over 45 billion product listings that updates every hour, making sure product details are correct and current.
This is a big improvement over normal searches, where users might have to click through multiple websites to find the same information. The Shopping Graph makes the experience smoother by putting all product details in one place, making it easier to compare options. Examples include finding the best vintage stores for mid-century modern furniture, complete with live updates on how busy they are, or searching for the perfect foldable camping chair within a certain price range and size.
AI Mode is also built to handle longer, more detailed questions, making it easy to ask follow-up questions. Google knows that many searches are part of bigger tasks, so they added a new panel on the left side of the desktop version where users can quickly go back to past searches.
This panel saves previous searches, including the AI responses, so users can keep researching with follow-up questions or adjust their search without starting over. This fixes a common frustration with regular searches, where important information can be scattered across different results and hard to find again. It will take a while to get to every user, but it seems like everyone will be able to use it soon.
Source: Google
