You knew it was coming: Google begins testing AI-only search results
arstechnica.com
AI Mode could be the future of Google, but it’s currently just an experiment.

Google has become so integral to online navigation that its name became a verb, meaning “to find things on the Internet.” Soon, Google might just tell you what’s on the Internet instead of showing you. The company has announced an expansion of its AI search features, powered by Gemini 2.0. Everyone will soon see more AI Overviews at the top of the results page, but Google is also testing a more substantial change in the form of AI Mode. This version of Google won’t show you the 10 blue links at all—Gemini completely takes over the results in AI Mode.

This marks the debut of Gemini 2.0 in Google search. Google announced the first Gemini 2.0 models in December 2024, beginning with the streamlined Gemini 2.0 Flash. The heavier versions of Gemini 2.0 are still in testing, but Google says it has tuned AI Overviews with this model to offer help with harder questions in the areas of math, coding, and multimodal queries.

With this update, you will begin seeing AI Overviews on more results pages, and minors with Google accounts will see AI results for the first time. In fact, even logged out users will see AI Overviews soon. This is a big change, but it’s only the start of Google’s plans for AI search.

Gemini 2.0 also powers the new AI Mode for search. It’s launching as an opt-in feature via Google’s Search Labs, offering a totally new alternative to search as we know it. This custom version of the Gemini large language model (LLM) skips the standard web links that have been part of every Google search thus far.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Number on reason to at least distance oneself from the big G. They shove unwanted shit down your throat despite the loud protests

    • Psythik@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      Unlike most of Lemmy, I actually like AI and even I don’t want this.

    • AbsentBird@lemm.eeEnglish
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      2 days ago

      I don’t get what they gain out of this, doesn’t it remove the sponsored results? Or will people pay to nudge AI weights to recommend their products?

      • werefreeatlast@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        Example:

        How do you make the best cookies diy?

        …the new Nabisco Cookies can be crushed to a fine powder mixed…

        What are other non-nabisco cookies I can cook?

        …Nestle chocolate chip cookies of course!

  • grepe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    thinking google is about offering you a quality search at this point is like thinking facebook is about improving your social experience. they both started like that and that’s how they hooked people up. but they have their own interests now. those interests revolve around affecting how people act and think. one central thing they need to do to fulfil those interests is controlling what people see and know… and that’s very hard to do when this pesky external content generated by other that is hard to control gets into way…

    • Higgs boson@dubvee.orgEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      They always had their own interests. If you thought otherwise, you’re naive. People generally start a business to make money.

      • grepe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        maybe i am naive, maybe you are cynical.

        some people do somerimes start business cause they have a good product in mind…

  • LemurAppointments@lemmy.caEnglish
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    2 days ago

    This is exactly why I’m working so hard to eradicate the verb “to google” from my vocabulary. I switched to DuckDuckGo (which then started providing AI summaries, but allowed an easy opt-out).

  • Apoplexy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    How many cases of “You should eat at least one small rock per day” AI bullshit does Google think is acceptable for production deployment?

    • negativeone@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 days ago

      I was just dealing with a plumbing problem the other day, and I was like, “I know, I’ll ask AI!”

      Basically everything it told me was completely wrong. And this was Claude Sonnet 3.7, one of the best!

    • Sizbang@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      Wait…you shouldn’t be doing that? Damnit! What am I going to do with the small rock mine I just bought?!

    • StarDreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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      2 days ago

      Nope. Plenty of people want this.

      In the last few years I’ve seen plenty of cases where CS undergrad students get stumped if ChatGPT is unable to debug/explain a question to them. I’ve literally heard “idk because ChatGPT can’t explain this lisp code” as an excuse during office hours.

      Before LLMs, there were also a significant amount of people who used GitHub issues/discord to ask simple application usage questions instead of Googling. There seems to be a significant decrease of people’s willingness to search for an answer regardless of AI tools existing.

      I wonder if it has to do with weaker reading comprehension skills?

      • 4Robato@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        I think it’s simply that getting a direct answer is easier than reading different forums with different views and come up with your idea. That doesn’t mean people want google search to stop searching. We have gemini, if I want to use gemini I can go to gemini. I don’t get why everything has to be AI. We can have multiple tools, not everything out there is a nail.

        • StarDreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          Somehow I disagree with both the premise and the conclusion here.

          I dislike a direct answer to things as it discourages understanding. What is the default memory allocation mechanism in glibc malloc? I could get the answer sbrk() and mmap() and call it a day, but I find understanding when it uses mmap instead of sbrk (since sbrk isn’t numa aware but mmap is) way more useful for future questions.

          Meanwhile, Google adding a tab for AI search is helpful for people who want to use just AI search. It doesn’t take much away from people doing traditional web searches. Why be mad about this instead of the other true questionable decisions Google is doing?

  • Rooty@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    2 days ago

    I’m decrepit enough to remember pre-Google web, with competing search engines. Bring back webrings!

  • grumt@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    Been using 4get for some time now, I don’t think a search engine can get better than this

    • arcterus@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      I looked into this a while back and came to the conclusion that the dev didn’t seem trustworthy. Also, just looking on the homepage, the images it showed me were a dildo with “4get” stuck on it using a sticky note and a modified manga panel about beating women. Not sure I’d want to use something like that in public.

      • mke@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        Not sure what I expected. For the equally curious with no foresight:

        definitely a dildo with 4get stuck on it using sticky note

            • ilikecoffee@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              2 days ago

              Sync for Lemmy, on Android. Tbh for some reason spoiler tags seem generally somewhat unreliable on Sync. Either way don’t worry about it too much.

      • grumt@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        yeah, the dev seems kinda like a shitposter ngl (although there are some funny pictures in the front page)

        However, I configured it as my default search engine, so I never go to the front page. Also, at least is free and open source (AGPL)

          • grumt@lemmy.mlEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            Well, 4get use a scraper, so I can use searxng, startpage or any other indexer with it (including DuckDuckGo, google, yandex etc). And another thing is the fact that almost every instance has support for Tor hidden services (which I use). But in the the end is more of matter of preference, I’m more of a fan of the less modern frontend

            • ilikecoffee@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              2 days ago

              Some searx instances have Tor as well ¯_(ツ)_/¯ But yeah, fair enough. I personally wouldn’t thrust a site with a massive dildo on the frontpage but to each their own haha

    • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      They did that long before AI.
      Google, Apple and plenty others have regular meetings with defense people to accomodate them.
      No surprise Eric Schmit left Google to form a defense company since some employees there had a consciense and didn’t like working on killer drone programs.

    • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      fascists really love LLM’s. like ridiculously in love with them. it’s where all their ‘art’ comes from. it’s made of the shallow aesthetics with no interiority they love so much. plus it doesn’t really require articulating your desires much, or having artists.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        To borrow Alex Jones’ term - it is information warfare. Train people to accept the outputs of LLMs, attack media literacy (in conjunction with the fact that public schools in the US spent ten years not teaching children how to read), and hide actual sources.

        You can have your LLM trained to weasel around the fact that the chattel slavery of black Americans was the primary cause of the Civil War, or falsely represent science surrounding gender and sexuality (they’re explicitly tuning Grok on this).

        You don’t have to worry about subversive messages on war or women in your “AI” generated “Ghibhli” film. Have all the fun space faring of Star Wars, without the prequel geopolitics everyone hated until they saw it happen.

        • melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          yeah. letting silicon valley build the sword with which to slay the dragon Truth was really some ‘neon genesis evangellion’ grade bullshit. posadism hasn’t failed in this timeline, though. fingers crossed.

          • andros_rex@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            I’m stoned so:

            The technocrats (Bezos, Thiel, Zuckerberg, etc) are SEELE. Musk is Gendo - ie, at the table but rogue (and I don’t want to imagine what he’d do with a planet full of Yue/Rei’s) Thiel doesn’t trust Musk, so Vance is like his Kaji. (Misato is like literally a Freud caricature of a woman, so we can make her a couch to fit the whole sexual ethos)

            COVID was the second impact. The angels are attendant disasters that go with it and things like climate change etc.

            Luigi is Kawori, a gorgeous bisexual twink who is being crushed by the system.

            The American people are Shinji, paralyzed under stress and trauma. Asuka is a bunch of other countries, being very angry at Americans for not doing shit while not really coping with their own problems.

            Rei is obviously the internet/technology.

            The globalists have been priming us for this information the entire time! Pre programming! Please buy my protein power.