Google's AI Mode Expands Globally Amid Controversy Over Scale and Traffic Impact

Google's AI Mode is a search feature that answers complex queries with generated prose rather than a ranked list of results. It sits behind its own tab, alongside Images, Videos, and Shopping, and accepts follow-up questions in the same session.

The system uses two mechanisms to generate responses: retrieval-augmented generation, which composes an answer from retrieved material, and query fan-out, which generates concurrent, related queries to gather more information. According to Nick Fox, Google's senior vice president for knowledge and information, the scale of the fan-out is underestimated by practitioners.

AI Mode was introduced as a Labs experiment in March 2025, exclusively available to US users with a Google One AI Premium subscription. It expanded to India in June, Workspace accounts in July, and the UK on July 28. The feature has since become available in more than 40 new countries and 35 new languages.

Google connected eight Merchant Center feed attributes to conversational surfaces, several carrying a documentation note that they serve experiences such as AI Mode. The attributes were assembled by feed specialists rather than announced, and they draw on a Shopping Graph holding more than 60 billion listings.