Google launches new AI Mode search feature in the UK - when will it be released, what is new AI search tool?
Google has launched a new AI-power search tool that bosses believe will revolutionise the famous search engine.
The tech giant announced that the most “powerful AI search to date” will launch for UK users this week. The feature will allow users to ask lengthy and complicated questions and receive a conversational response in return.
AI Mode is already a feature in the US, where it launched in May and India, where it was added as a feature in the Google Search function earlier this month. The AI mode will function alongside the company’s AI Overview, which gives users a brief summary of their search query at the top of the search page.
Hema Budaraju, Google’s vice president of product management for search, said that the new AI mode will mark a “major shift” in how users interact with the traditional Google interface. She said: “AI Mode is particularly helpful for exploratory questions and for more complicated tasks like comparing products, planning a trip or understanding complex how-tos.
“In fact, we’ve found that early users of AI Mode are asking questions that are two or three times the length of traditional search queries.”
Ms Budaraju said that the new function should allow for users to “find information that was previously much harder to find”, adding: “This is the beginning of a major shift.”
How does Google’s new AI Mode work?
The new AI Mode, which is powered by Gemini 2.5, will not replace Google’s traditional search engine. Using the AI Mode will give users who type in queries or questions a longer answer, featuring fewer ‘blue links’ to websites. The AI Mode will be optional for the time being, with it appearing as a tab and option to toggle within the search box.
Users will be able to ask more nuanced questions that previously would have required multiple searches to find an answer for. It will work by breaking down the longer questions into sub-topics and sending out a range of queries to collate into one answer.
The new AI Mode will also allow ‘multimodal’ searches, which include text, voice and image queries.