By: Nick Gambino
You may have noticed an extra tab at the top of your Google Search labeled “AI Mode.” This launched wide last month and signifies a huge pivot to AI assisted internet search.
AI Mode integrates your phone camera with Search, allowing you to call up search results on pretty much anything in your environment. It also generates thorough AI summaries that are a lot more in-depth than the AI overviews we’ve been saying at the top of our search results.
Now Google has added the ability to hold full-blown verbal conversations with AI Mode through the Live feature in both the iOS and Android Google app.
To check it out for yourself, you’ll need to opt into the AI Mode experiment. Once you’ve enrolled you’ll gain access to all the features contained in AI Mode. Here’s what you’ll do if you want to have a convo with the advanced AI model:
Fire up your Google app and tap “Live.” This will turn on Search’s listening function. Now all you have to do is just ask your question and you’ll get a verbal response from Google AI, much the way you’d get a written response from ChatGPT or a traditional Google search. This is incredibly handy if you’re out and about or unable to type in a search.
In their demonstration video, Google uses the example question “What are some tips for preventing a linen dress from wrinkling in a suitcase?” A conversationally toned response comes back in less than two seconds which is super impressive.
You can go back and forth with this query, asking follow up questions and engaging further. You can even use Search Live in the background as you navigate to other apps. So if you want to get your camera involved, you can do that too. AI Mode will also offer up a transcript of the conversation to review.
This feels like a turning point for internet search. We’ve already seen the landscape change significantly in the last year or two, but now with the advent of conversational assistance in every Google Search, we have an absolute game changer.
