AI Mode

AI Mode is Google's conversational search product, a full-page interface that replaces the traditional results page with an AI-driven dialogue where users refine queries through follow-up prompts. Where AI Overviews inserts a summary block into a conventional results page, AI Mode is a distinct interaction paradigm in which the underlying web sources are subordinated further still, citations appearing as compact footnotes rather than ranked links. Google began rolling out AI Mode to US users in 2025 and signalled global expansion in 2026.

The product was named alongside AI Overviews and model fine-tuning in the UK Competition and Markets Authority's 3 June 2026 opt-out order, the first regulatory action anywhere in the world to formally scope a conversational AI search product for publisher-rights intervention. The CMA's decision to bundle AI Mode with AI Overviews reflects a regulatory view that both features share the same underlying mechanics: scraping publisher content, synthesising it into an on-platform answer, and presenting that answer in a way that reduces traffic to originating sites.

For publishers, AI Mode represents an escalation of the AI Overviews problem because the conversational loop actively discourages exit: once a user is in a dialogue, following a link to a third-party site interrupts the flow in a way that clicking a search result does not. Regulators and publishers in the EU and US are tracking the CMA enforcement closely as a template for how to address both products simultaneously.