New Google Search AI Mode is 'Total Reimagining,' Says CEO Sundar Pichai

Most of Google’s AI usage comes from AI Overviews in Search, said Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a wide-ranging series of announcements during the Google I/O keynote on May 20, in Mountain View, California. This year’s I/O presentation shows Google trying to dominate the hot AI assistant landscape, from AR glasses that can answer questions about objects in view to collapsing the difference between search engines and generative AI queries.

The best of Google’s offerings don’t come cheap: Gemini subscription plans will now be split into a Pro and Ultra plan. The $19.99 AI Pro plan brings a suite of products and higher rate limits than the free version. The pricey ($249.99) Ultra plan includes the highest rate limit and early access to products like the upcoming Gemini 2.5 Pro with deep reasoning, plus the full suite of AI products such as the moviemaker Flow.

AI Mode Search Experience Further Melds Search Engines With Generative AI

Google Search will now offer an AI Mode tab that outsources web search to Gemini, pulling from across the web to answer multi-part questions. At the I/O presentation, Pichai called AI Mode “the total reimagining of search.”

More users are asking longer questions of Google Search since the inclusion of AI Overviews, he said. That shift to longer questions could mean a gradual cultural shift in the way users interface with the web, thinking not of keywords, but of the kind of queries generative AI are best suited to.

AI Mode will be available for free in the US starting May 20, with a gradual rollout finishing in a matter of weeks.

“Over time, we’ll graduate many of AI Mode’s cutting-edge features and capabilities directly into the core Search Experience,” said Google Vice President of Search Liz Reid at Google I/O.

Essentially, Google is now saying only AI can effectively do what its search engine once did: index the entire web.

AI Mode can chain together searches and offer personalized suggestions if the user chooses to connect apps like Gmail. Google proposes AI Mode could be a one-click spot for local services, restaurant reservations, shopping, and more.

Google Search will also hook to the multimodal AI Project Astra. In AI Mode or in Google Lens, users can point the camera and speak to the AI to receive answers about the world from Search.

Google’s AI products processed 480 trillion tokens monthly this year, a 50 times increase over last year, said Pichai. More than 7 million developers have used the Gemini AI in Google AI Studio, and the Vertex AI and Gemini app has more than 400 million monthly active users, Pichai said.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT had 400 million weekly active users in January 2015, 175 million of whom use the mobile app, according to Andreesen Horowitz.

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