Google hints it may "soon" make AI Mode the default in Search

midian182

midian182

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A hot potato: Are you a fan of the AI Mode that is now the first option underneath Google's Search bar? Probably not, but it doesn't really matter if you love it or hate it: Google has hinted that it will be making this the default for Search, replacing the classic mode.

With AI Mode, Google uses its Gemini LLM to produce conversational answers to users' search queries, rather than the expected list of links. Google is also adding agentic features to this mode, such as helping book dinner reservations, tickets, and other appointments.

Like so many artificial intelligence features, the response to AI Mode has been mixed – there are plenty of people performing searches on how to remove it as an option. But Google has spent a lot of money on its AI features, and it really wants people to use them.

On Friday, Logan Kilpatrick, lead product manager for Google AI Studio, posted a message on X about AI Mode becoming more accessible at the new google.com/AI URL. Another user said that the mode should be the default for Search, to which Kilpatrick replied "soon :)".

Google Search vice president Robby Stein tried to downplay the concerns and Kilpatrick's comments. He noted that he "wouldn't read too much into this. we're focusing on making it easy to access AI Mode for those who want it."

Google said in late July that AI Mode had "very positive feedback" and "already has over 100 million monthly active users in the US and India."

Beyond the people who would simply rather not use AI Mode, making it the default would almost certainly result in the dire situation of AI destroying the internet's business model even worse.

In May, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned that AI summaries and zero-click searches were driving traffic away from publishers and killing the business model of the web that has sustained content creators for the last 15+ years.

In July, it was reported that Google's AI Overviews had cut link clicks by almost 50%. If Google makes AI Mode the default, it will exacerbate the situation.

Some may argue that they appreciate being able to find answers without clicking through several websites, but in addition the hallucination problem, smaller independent websites – especially those that AI companies don't partner with – aren't going to create new content when they get paid nothing or almost nothing for doing so. We could end up with only a handful of massive, corporation-owned sites – visited by fewer and fewer people – that make most of their money from AI companies paying to scrape their content.

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Google hints it may "soon" make AI Mode the default in Search

 
Great, so all your google searches get reduced to google's ai overview nonsense by default and you have to jump through hoops to review the results and see what you can find yourself, more reasons to try and avoid google...
 
Their "AI" sucks. Tried looking up the high school's attendance line the other day and the first thing that the "AI" shows was some random a$s phone number for some business that isn't even associated with my kid's school.

It's garbage.

I'm not sure what this story is even trying to convey to the readers because we're being told that Google is going to be replacing their search engine with a newer, shittier search engine.
 
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Gemini is real good but not perfect. I use it daily for work queries and it saves me a lot of time. For most of my technical queries it runs about between 80-100% accuracy. However, with some difficult queries it can be 100% wrong from using bad sources. Unfortunately, it's not good at vetting sources and it cannot question data it finds. It simply reports what it has found.

It's a tool, it requires human review. I like it because it often saves me from having to click through multiple links. It has it's place but it's no panacea.
 
Neatfeatguy said:
Their "AI" sucks. Tried looking up the high school's attendance line the other day and the first thing that the "AI" shows was some random a$s phone number for some business that isn't even associated with my kid's school.

It's garbage.

I'm not sure what this story is even trying to convey to the readers because we're being told that Google is going to be replacing their search engine with a newer, shittier search engine.
Click to expand...

Great conclusion made by a single query! lmao
 
BadThad said:
Great conclusion made by a single query! lmao
Click to expand...
It is a great conclusion, thank you.

Using the non-AI search engine I'm given the correct results. Zero issues.

Using the "AI" search engine I'm given incorrect results. It is not my responsibility to correct the mistakes that the "AI" gives when it's wrong. If Gemini is, as you said, "is real good", it should be able to return a simple query without mucking it up.

If Google wants to replace a functional search engine with one that is worse, then that is their prerogative. I for one won't be using it.
 
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BadThad said:
Gemini is real good but not perfect. I use it daily for work queries and it saves me a lot of time. For most of my technical queries it runs about between 80-100% accuracy. However, with some difficult queries it can be 100% wrong from using bad sources. Unfortunately, it's not good at vetting sources and it cannot question data it finds. It simply reports what it has found.

It's a tool, it requires human review. I like it because it often saves me from having to click through multiple links. It has it's place but it's no panacea.
Click to expand...
How does the AI save you time if you have to double check all its work to ensure accuracy?
 
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Theinsanegamer said:
How does the AI save you time if you have to double check all its work to ensure accuracy?
Click to expand...

I have to read the AI summary and I can instantly spot any issues with the answer. It's not really "double checking". I use my 35 years of scientific experience to validate the summary. At my age, it's easy to spot the BS and to understand when I've hit gold. When I hit gold, it will take me to the source document for further validation.

It saves me time by not having to open and read many different websites. There can be a lot of CRTL+F involved with my old school, manual searches. With the right key words, AI automatically consolidates data from multiple sites into a quick summary. No more scanning site after site hoping to find something. (I would add the indexing of government websites is excellent.) It's also useful in a negative sense, when I'm looking for something proprietary, it can tell me it can't find anything. I've found it to be nearly 100% accurate in that respect!

It's a tool in my kit, nothing more. What once took me 2-3 hours of manual searching is typically found in seconds by AI. It is not going to do my job for me but it certainly saves me time.
 
Neatfeatguy said:
It is a great conclusion, thank you.

Using the non-AI search engine I'm given the correct results. Zero issues.

Using the "AI" search engine I'm given incorrect results. It is not my responsibility to correct the mistakes that the "AI" gives when it's wrong. If Gemini is, as you said, "is real good", it should be able to return a simple query without mucking it up.

If Google wants to replace a functional search engine with one that is worse, then that is their prerogative. I for one won't be using it.
Click to expand...
+1
 
And eventually,slowly but surely, it will morph into an Amazon-like search engine, wherein all your answers are Amazon products -except in this instance,all your answers will be what Google want you to see....
 
First of all, many of my Google searches are looking for web site links, not to answer a question via AI. Providing ONLY an AI interpretation of what I wanted is sure to be wrong most of the time. The AI answers may be useful when I'm answering a question but are useless when searching for actual links.

Not to mention...I don't trust AI answers either unless I'm willing to research them deeply enough to identify and ignore hallucinations.

Leave the AI answer as the first response but absolutely keep the web links following the AI answer.
 
With how bad their search has become... I'm not even mad. Mostly stopped using it.

Their AI is on par with ChatGPT and worse than Claude in my experience.
 
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