Google brings 'AI Mode' search experience to India

AI Mode will be available to Indian consumers as an experiment in Labs in English language.

Google is bringing AI Mode, an end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI) search experience, to Indian consumers as part of its efforts to retain search leadership amid growing challenge from Perplexity, OpenAI's ChatGPT and others.

The rollout comes nearly a month after Google started offering the search experience to consumers in the United States. AI Mode was introduced as an experimental feature in March, available to a limited group of users.

AI Mode, accessible through a dedicated tab on the Search results page, enables users to ask longer, more complex or nuanced questions that would have previously required multiple searches.

"It’s particularly helpful for exploratory questions and for more complicated tasks like comparing products, planning a trip, or understanding complex how-tos," Hema Budaraju, Vice President of product management for search at Google said in a blogpost.

AI Mode combines advanced capabilities from the company's artificial intelligence models with access to its information systems, including real-time sources like the Knowledge Graph, real-world data and shopping information for billions of products.

It uses a "query fan-out" technique which breaks down a question into different subtopics and concurrently searches across multiple data sources. It then brings these results together to provide an easy-to-understand response.

At Google I/O 2025, CEO Sundar Pichai said early testers asked longer and more complex queries, often two to three times and sometimes up to five times the length of traditional searches.

Powered by a custom version of Gemini 2.5, the feature builds on Google's AI-powered search experience, AI Overviews, introduced last year.

AI Overviews provides a quick summary of a topic along with links to go deeper. AI Mode will be available to consumers as an experiment in Labs in English language.

Read: Google I/O 2025 was a litmus test. Did Sundar Pichai deliver?

Budaraju stated that AI Mode is also designed to be multimodal, enabling people to ask questions through text, voice, or images. The company is also bringing the capabilities of Lens into AI Mode, allowing people to ask complex questions about what they see.

These efforts are part of Google's push to reimagine its flagship Search product for the AI era, as rivals gain ground amid an ongoing shift in how consumers seek information.

Budaraju said the rollout is a step towards Google's "long-term vision to make finding and accessing information even more effortless on Search".

"AI Mode expands what AI Overviews can do with more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities," she said.

These developments also come at a time when Google is facing the threat of a breakup by the US government following a federal judge's ruling in August that the company violated antitrust laws to maintain its online search monopoly.

The US Department of Justice is seeking to break up Google, potentially forcing the tech giant to divest its popular Chrome web browser, syndicate its search and advertising data to help rivals improve their quality and end exclusive distribution agreements with companies like Apple. The US district court recently concluded hearing arguments to determine remedies for this case.