Latest news with #RobbyStein
Observer
2 days ago
- Business
- Observer
Google's new AI-powered search has arrived
Last week, I asked Google to help me plan my daughter's birthday party by finding a park in Oakland, California, with picnic tables. The site generated a list of parks nearby, so I went to scout two of them out — only to find there were, in fact, no tables. 'I was just there,' I typed to Google. 'I didn't see wooden tables.' Google acknowledged the mistake and produced another list, which again included one of the parks with no tables. I repeated this experiment by asking Google to find an affordable car wash nearby. Google listed a service for $25, but when I arrived, a car wash cost $65. I also asked Google to find a grocery store where I could buy an exotic pepper paste. Its list included a nearby Whole Foods, which didn't carry the item. I wasn't doing traditional web searches on I was testing the company's new AI Mode, a tool that is similar to chatbots like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, where users can type in questions to get answers. AI Mode, which is rolling out worldwide in the coming weeks, will soon appear as a tab next to your search results. The arrival of AI Mode underscores how new technology is redefining what it means to search for something online. For decades, a web search involved looking up keywords, like 'most reliable car brands,' to show a list of relevant websites. Now, with generative AI, the technology that powers chatbots by using complex language models to guess what words belong together, you can ask more specific questions or make complicated requests. That could include directing it to create a chart comparing the five most reliable 2025 sedans. Google, which has already been showing AI-generated summaries on its search pages for the past year, said AI Mode was a new frontier for search that would complement — but not yet replace — its traditional counterpart. 'We're really trying for AI Mode to be best at a new class of questions that are harder, more specific, and the best for when you're going back and forth trying to get something done,' Robby Stein, a Google executive who oversees the search product team, said in an interview. The prominent placement of AI Mode on shows that AI is rapidly becoming unavoidable. Meta has added a chatbot, Meta AI, in Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, and Microsoft has integrated AI into its Bing search engine and its latest Surface computers. What's unique about AI Mode is that the technology stitches together data from Google's vast empire of internet services to provide an answer to a query. When you type a question, it could pull data from search queries on location information on Google Maps, and Google's shopping data on consumer products. To help assess whether AI is the future of search, I tested the new tool against traditional Google searches for a multitude of personal tasks over the past week, including shopping for a toddler car seat, preparing for a Memorial Day barbecue, and understanding the plot twists of a popular video game. The results were mixed, with lots of hits but also lots of misses, so I encourage people to use AI Mode with caution. Here's how it went. AI Mode vs. Google Search For each of my experiments, I opened AI Mode in one browser tab and with its traditional search bar in another. I typed the same query in each tab, then compared AI Mode's answers with Google's top list of search results. That helped determine whether AI Mode was more effective or if I was better off clicking on search results to find the answers. Searching for Things and Places My earlier examples of picnic tables, a grocery item, and a cheap carwash were similar in that they involved asking Google to find places or objects in the real world. Each of those queries prompted Google's AI to pull my location information and scan sources found on the web. — Google's AI Mode list included two parks with no picnic tables, but when I used to do the same search, its top three results included parks nearby that had tables. — Google's AI Mode suggested that the carwash I visited was $25 based on one user review that mentioned this price. But a Google search showed several Yelp reviews of the business, where people reported a more accurate range of $50 to $70. — Google's AI Mode generated a list of grocery stores, including Whole Foods, that potentially sold the aji amarillo paste that I needed to make Peruvian chicken for a Memorial Day barbecue. When I did a normal Google search for the paste nearby, the search engine took me to an Instacart listing confirming that one of the stores listed by AI Mode, Berkeley Bowl, carried the paste. Winner: Google search by a long shot. AI Mode's suggestions were sometimes accurate, but failing to check its answers could lead you down the wrong path and waste your time. Google said users of AI Mode could share feedback so it could quickly learn. 'It's early days, and these are technologies that are just starting to roll out now,' Stein said. 'As we learn about how to improve it, we'll improve it as quickly as possible.' Product Research In another test, I asked Google's AI to help me research toddler car seats. This is where I saw the technology's potential to become very useful. Unlike a traditional web search, which would require me to read reviews of various car seat models and jot down a list including their pricing and features, AI Mode did all of this for me. I typed: 'I'm shopping for a convertible car seat. Create a table for me including popular models from Graco, Chicco, and others, and include pricing and main features.' Google immediately generated a handy chart to make comparing five car seats easy. There were some hiccups: Some information was missing from the table, and I noticed that the pricing was wrong for two of the seats. Still, it was simple for me to ask the AI to make corrections, and overall, picking a car seat with this bespoke chart sped up the process for me compared with the old-school method. I tested AI Mode to research other products like birthday gifts for a 1-year-old and the best electric toothbrush. The suggestions were useful. Winner: AI Mode. It's a nifty shopping tool, though it's still wise to do a Google search to double-check the prices. Pop Culture After becoming a sleep-deprived father with the attention span of a goldfish, I got in the habit of reading summaries of movies and TV shows with convoluted plots. Recently, I finished a popular video game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which had a complex storyline. So I asked Google to summarize what had happened. Google gathered information from various video game blogs, Reddit posts, and YouTube videos to piece together a cohesive summary of the game's plot and many twists. It was a satisfying recap. I tested AI Mode on other pieces of pop culture, like the Apple TV show 'Severance' and HBO's 'The Last of Us,' including how the latter show was different from the video game on which it's based. The tool generated similarly useful summaries. Winner: AI Mode. A traditional Google search will show you plenty of plot summaries of TV shows, games, and movies on various sites. But sometimes you just want a quick and dirty bullet-pointed recap. Bottom Line A traditional Google search is still best for the simple act of looking for things to do nearby, but AI Mode could prove to be a nifty tool for more tedious tasks like product research for online shopping — an instant chart comparing baby car seats is helpful, even if imperfect. Just always check the answers. As for whether this is the future of search, consumers will probably decide that over time. If most of you prefer to use AI Mode, it will probably gradually replace Google as we know it. I still prefer an old-school search, but my feelings could change one chart of baby gear at a time. This article originally appeared in
Indianapolis Star
4 days ago
- Indianapolis Star
Google may replace 'I'm Feeling Lucky' with AI search: What to know
No more feeling lucky for some Google users, as the search engine runs a new artificial intelligence experiment. For years, a button under the Google search bar has allowed users a different search experience. Rather than typing in a word, phrase or question and getting a string of results, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button takes users to the top-result webpage associated with their input. As part of a new artificial intelligence experiment, the button has been removed for users tapped into the search engine's AI program, Google Labs. In its place is a new artificial intelligence feature called AI Mode. "We often test different ways for people to access our helpful features. This is just one of many experiments, and it's limited to Labs users only," a Google spokesperson told USA TODAY on May 27. Here's what to know about Google's latest AI experiment. Google gets a makeover: Google makes first branding change in 10 years with new 'G' icon More AI: Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' could ban states from regulating AI for a decade The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is located underneath the Google search bar when visiting When users enter a word, phrase or question in the Google search bar and then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, rather than using the traditional search, users are taken to the top-result webpage for their input. For example, if a user searches "dog food" on Google, an array of responses generate. The user may see sponsored dog food options through Google Shopping, a list of stores that sell dog food and top-selling dog food websites. If a user searches "dog food" on Google and clicks the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, the user is taken to the Chewy website, as this webpage is the top clicked result by Google users who search "dog food." Google is not completely phasing out the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button and most Google users are still able to access it. The removal of the button for Google Labs users is a part of an experiment gauging the use of artificial intelligence in tandem with Google search. Google's AI Mode is an artificial intelligence-powered search engine that uses a "query fan-out" technique, conducting multiple searches to compile one response for a more complex answer. AI Mode functions similar to software like OpenAI's ChatGPT. "You can ask nuanced questions that might have previously taken multiple searches − like exploring a new concept or comparing detailed options − and get a helpful AI-powered response with links to learn more," Vice President of Google Search Product Robby Stein wrote about AI Mode in a May 5 blog post. While initially limited to Google Labs users − people who have signed up for Google's early testing experiments, AI Mode is now available to all Google users based in the U.S. who opt in to the tool. Not a Google Labs user but still want to try out AI Mode? Here's how: Google Labs allows users to test Google's early-stage experiments and provide feedback. Labs is free, but Google users must sign up to participate in the program with a valid Google account. Google student and work accounts do not qualify.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google makes AI Mode search experiment available for everyone to try
AI Mode in Google Search is one step closer to public launch now that the waitlist has been removed for U.S. users. In an announcement on Thursday, Google shared that all users over 18 years old can now opt in to trying out AI Mode in Labs, the company's testing ground for new AI features. Google calls AI mode a "new Search experiment that uses advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities to answer even your toughest questions." Google also shared that it's introducing "product and place cards" within the responses for up-to-date information, including images, ratings, reviews, store hours, and availability. SEE ALSO: Google rolls out Gemini 2.5 Flash preview in the Gemini app. What's new? For the uninitiated, AI Mode is Google's search feature that combines the Gemini chatbot experience with search results. The feature integrates Gemini's reasoning capabilities with Google's traditional search engine algorithm. It processes search queries by breaking down the question, scanning the web, and summarizing its findings. "What we've done is that we've taught the model how to use Google," Robby Stein, Google's VP of product for Google Search, told Mashable in an interview. Via Giphy The introduction of AI Mode is just one of the many ways Google is injecting AI features into its search engine. AI Mode is different from AI Overviews, which provides an AI-generated summary at the top of the search page. Instead, AI Mode looks more like the standalone Gemini app interface where can ask follow-up questions, but with real-time search results in a sidebar. "People want more control and an ability to say, 'I have a pretty complicated, specific thing in mind... like comparing, four or five different products that don't even exist in any single place,'" said Stein, "and they really want the power of AI to help them with more of their needs." AI Overviews, which launched almost exactly a year ago, is the most prominent change to the traditional search results format. And its controversies are well documented at this point. There are hallucinations and errors, as well as polarized reactions from users who find the feature annoying, especially since it can't be turned off. Many publishers are also concerned about how it's affecting their traffic. By summarizing the contents of webpages within Google itself, many websites are seeing fewer visitors. But according to Google's Q1 earnings report, AI Overviews now has 1.5 billion monthly users. We asked Stein if that's because users are served AI Overviews by default, and Stein clarified that Google doesn't measure use by whether AI Overviews simply appear on the page. "It's based on our view that the user, read it, interacted with it, engaged with it, in some way." When the conversation turned to Google's responsibility to publishers, Stein said "having a thriving web is in everyone's best interest, it's important to Google, it's important to our users, important to publishers." He also shared thoughts on how the new AI Mode can lead to user experiences that never would have involved publishers in the first place. "I also think that this is an expansionary moment where what we're seeing is that these are kinds of questions that the people were not commonly asking of Google, because now you can ask really anything." Stein gave the example of uploading a picture of something wrong with his bathroom tile to AI Mode, which "diagnosed" the issue and shared links to local businesses. When asked whether Google has seen a decrease in visits to publishers, as some surveys and individual publishers have noticed, Stein said they haven't seen a change in clicks out to the wider web. "For any individual publisher, there's lots of reasons why something could fluctuate," he said. "We don't really look at specific publishers in that way. We think about it really in the aggregate." As of May 1, interested users in the U.S. can start searching with AI Mode. To use the experimental tool, you will need to turn on your web search history in your Google account. To get started, head to Google Labs to sign up.
Fast Company
20-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Google's AI Mode goes prime time, a direct answer to ChatGPT Search
Google is rapidly expanding its AI search capabilities, as reflected in the announcements it made Tuesday at its Google I/O developer conference. The search giant announced the general availability of AI Mode, its chatbot-format AI search product; some changes to its AI Overviews search results; and its plans to add new visual and agentic search features this summer. Google's biggest announcement in the realm of search was the general availability of its AI Mode, a chatbot-style search interface that allows users to enter a back-and-forth with the underlying large language model to zero in on a complete and satisfying answer. 'AI Mode is really our most powerful version of AI search,' Robby Stein, Google's VP of Product for Search, tells Fast Company. The tool had been available as an experimental product from Google Labs. Now it's a real product, available to all users and accessible within various Google apps, and as a tab within the Google mobile app. AI Mode is powered by Gemini 2.5, Google's most formidable model, which was developed by DeepMind. The model can remember a lot of data during a user interaction, and can reason its way to a responsive answer. Because of this, AI Mode can be used for more complex, multipart queries. 'We're seeing this being used for the more sophisticated set of questions people have,' Stein says. 'You have math questions, you have how-to questions, you want to compare two products—like many things that haven't been done before, that are probably unique to you.' The user gets back a conversational AI answer synthesized from a variety of sources. 'The main magic of the system is this new advanced modeling capability for AI Mode, something called a query fan-out where the model has learned to use Google,' Stein says. 'It generates potentially dozens of queries off of your single question.' The LLM might make data calls to the web, indexes of web data, maps and location data, product information, as well as API connections to more dynamic data such as sports scores, weather, or stock prices. New shopping tools Google also introduced some new shopping features in AI Mode that leverage the multimodal and reasoning capabilities of the Gemini 2.5 models. Google indexes millions of products, along with prices and other information. The agentic capability of the Gemini model lets AI Mode keep an eye out for a product the user wants, with the right set of desired features and below a price threshold that the user sets. The AI can then alert the user with the information, as well as a button that says 'buy for me.' If the user clicks it the agent will complete the purchase. Google is also releasing a virtual clothing try-on function in AI Mode. The feature addresses perhaps the biggest problem with buying and selling apparel online. 'It's a problem that we've been trying to solve over the last few years,' says Lilian Rincon, VP of Consumer Shopping Products. 'Which is this dilemma of [where] users see a product but they don't know what that product will look like on them.' Virtual Try-on lets a user upload a photo of themself, then the AI shows the user what they'd look like in any of the billions of clothing products Google indexes. The feature is powered by a new custom image generation model for fashion that understands the nuances of the human body and how various fabrics fold and bend over the body type of the user, Rincon says. Google has released Virtual Try-on as an experimental feature in Google Labs. New features coming to AI Mode this summer Google says it intends to roll out further enhancements to AI Mode over the summer. For starters, it's adding the functionality of its previously announced Project Mariner (an AI agent prototype that works with the Chrome browser) to AI Mode. So the LLM will be able to control the user's web browser to access information from websites, fill out and submit forms, and use websites to plan and book tasks. Google is going to start by enabling the AI to do things like book event tickets, make restaurant reservations, and set appointments for local services. The user can give the AI agent special instructions or conditions, such as 'buy tickets only if less than $100, and only if the weather (if its an outdoor event) forecast looks good.' The AI will not only find the best ticket prices to a show, but will also submit the data needed to buy the ticket for the user. (The user gets final sign-off, of course.) Google will be adding a new 'deep search' function in which the model might access, and reason about, hundreds of online, indexed, or AI data sources. The model might spend several minutes thinking through the completeness of its answer, and perhaps make additional data queries. The end result is a comprehensive research report on a given topic. At last year's I/O, Google revealed its Project Astra, a prototype of a universal AI assistant that can see, hear, and reason, and converse with the user, out loud, in real time. The assistant taps into search in several ways. A user could show the assistant an object in front of the phone camera and ask for more information about it, which the agent would get from the web. Or the assistant might be shown a recipe, and help the user shop for the ingredients. Google also plans to launch enhanced personalization features to AI search as a way of delivering more relevant search results. 'The best version of search is one that knows you well,' Stein says. For example, AI Mode and AI Overviews soon might consult a user's search history to use past preferences to inform the content of current queries. That's not all. Google also intends to consult user data from other Google services, including Gmail, to inform searches, subject to user opt-in. Finally, the company will add data visualizations to search results, which it believes will help users draw meaning from data returned in search results. It will start by modeling sports and financial data this summer, Stein says. AI Overviews now reaches almost all Google users AI Overviews is Google's original AI search experience. For some types of search queries, users see an AI-generated narrative summary of information synthesized from various web documents and Google's information graphs. Stein says Google is now making AI Overviews available to 95 more countries, bringing the total to around 200, and in 40 languages. Google claims that AI Overviews, its generative AI search experience, now has 1.5 billion users. Where search is concerned, Google is a victim of the 'inventor's dilemma.' It built a massive business placing ads around its search results, so it has a good reason to keep optimizing and improving that experience, rather than pivoting toward new AI-based search, which nobody has reliably monetized with ads yet. Indeed Google's core experience still consists of relatively short queries and results consisting of ranked websites and an assortment of Google-owned content. But development of AI search products and functions seems to be accelerating. Google is protecting its cash cow (traditional search with ads) while keeping pace with the chatbot search experiences offered by newcomers like OpenAI's ChatGPT. But it's more than that. Google's VP and Head of Search Liz Reid suggests that we may be looking at the future of Google Search—full stop. 'I think one of the things that's very exciting with AI Mode is not just that it is our cutting-edge AI search, but it becomes a glimpse of what we think can be more broadly available,' Reid tells Fast Company. 'And so our current belief is that we're going to take the things that work really well in AI Mode and bring them right to the core of search and AI Overviews.'
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google updates Search product with new AI capabilities as rivals swarm
Google (GOOG, GOOGL) debuted some of the biggest changes to its Search product in years at the company's annual I/O conference in California on Tuesday as upstarts like OpenAI ( and Perplexity ( seek to take its search crown. The tech giant is bringing its ChatGPT competitor AI Mode to all US users, adding high-powered AI models to its standard AI Overviews, and debuting new agentic capabilities that allow Google to do things like search for and prepare purchases for tickets to events on your behalf. Google's AI Mode, a dedicated chatbot-style search option, will now be available from the standard Google Search page alongside tabs like Images, Videos, and News. The offering was previously only available in Google's Labs test mode. AI Mode uses Google's frontier models and takes advantage of what the company calls its "query fan-out" technique. The method, Google says, breaks down your queries into smaller subtopics, running a number of separate searches at the same time. That, Google explains, allows AI Mode to perform deeper searches than traditional Google Search. AI Mode won't give you a classic list of blue links, though. Instead, you'll get your results via a kind of back-and-forth conversation with the service. AI Mode will also offer a Deep Search option, which uses the same fan-out technique that AI Mode does, but performs hundreds of those smaller searches, giving you far more detailed results. The company says the feature can churn out an 'expert-level fully-cited report' in minutes, which it claims will save users hours of research. According to Google vice president of product for search Robby Stein, Google will also begin to use the same models that power AI Mode to provide results in the company's AI Overviews found at the top of standard Google Search results, similar to how you'll see images or videos at the top of certain results. 'If you type in a specific question, and it's really hard, a bunch of these new modeling breakthroughs will just start running in the background to help power AI Overviews,' Stein told Yahoo Finance. 'So we'll always make sure that if you type something into the regular Google Search box, we'll bring you the most helpful reply across everything we have at Google, whether it's AI, Images, Finance, Maps, anything.' According to Stein, AI Overviews now has 1.5 billion monthly users and is available in 200 countries and territories in 40 languages. 'What we're seeing is that … people are asking different kinds of questions and that for these questions … we're seeing 10% growth in those kinds of queries in the biggest markets like the US and India, which makes it the largest search launch this decade,' Stein said. Google is also debuting its Search Live feature, which allows you to use your phone's camera to ask questions about live video you capture in real time. You'll be able to access Search Live via AI Mode or the Google Lens app by tapping the Live icon and immediately be able to ask the apps questions about what the camera sees. In one example, Stein explained how a user could show an engineering project of a bridge made of popsicle sticks and ask how they could make the bridge stronger. Search Live responded by telling the user to add more triangular structures to the miniature. It's the type of feature that could help people in real-world situations. You could imagine a world in which Search Live can show you how to put together furniture or explain how to change your car's spark plugs. According to Stein, Google Lens, like AI Overview, now has 1.5 billion monthly users, and visual searches more broadly are up 65% year over year. Google is also bringing the agentic AI capabilities of its Project Mariner to AI Mode. Project Mariner is Google's agentic AI prototype designed to allow AI bots to perform actions on your behalf. The tech industry is leaning heavily on agentic AI as the next generation of AI capabilities that will power everything from enterprise applications to consumer software. Microsoft on Monday laid out its own vision of what it calls the agentic web during its Build conference in Seattle. Google's agentic functionality will allow you to do things like ask AI Mode to find you two affordable tickets to a baseball game. AI Mode will then run through the process of finding the best price for tickets, fill out your information in any necessary order forms, and serve up the purchase menu. All of these improvements come as Google looks to ensure it holds on to its place as the global leader in search. A pair of federal judges found that the company operates illegal monopolies in both the search and online advertising industries. Now the Department of Justice is seeking to dismantle Google's businesses, including potentially forcing it to sell its Chrome browser. During a recent hearing related to the DOJ's case against Google's search business, Apple (AAPL) senior vice president of services Eddy Cue said the iPhone maker saw its first decline in search queries in the company's Safari browser in April. Google is the default search option for Safari, a part of a $20 billion-a-year deal between the tech giants. Cue attributed the decline to consumers opting to use AI search options like ChatGPT. But Google has pushed back against the claim, saying its search traffic continues to grow on Apple devices. Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@ Follow him on X/Twitter at @DanielHowley.
