- Google has upgraded its AI mode to search
- AI mode can now analyze PDF files and images and use Search Live to analyze video content
- AI mode has also added the function of the canvas
Google has improved its AI mode in search with a number of new features that are clearly aimed at encouraging people tempted by AI tools elsewhere to stay around.
AI mode is already different from traditional search, putting a more comprehensive response to your inquiry by sending more related questions based on your original prompt. You can then ask follow -ups and adjust the driving force in your search.
With the new updates, AI mode is more of a multifaceted tool for learning and organizing information. The most immediately remarkable upgrade is that you can now upload PDFs and images to AI mode on your desk and ask nuanced questions about them.
On mobile, Google already allows you to use AI mode to ask photos or screens questions. But making it available to Desktop users means you can upload the entire slide tire from a class or pull over a pdf of a book and grill AI about the content as if it is an unpaid tutor. And the model doesn’t just respond based on your file; It will cross-reference on the web to provide answers that fit the context of your upload and are supported by sources and links.
Canvas planning
In case you can’t get all your deep dives done in a search, the new canvas function AI MODE users offers a longer-term option to organize information. Canvas is displayed as a sidebar in AI mode that allows you to create and edit projects across multiple sessions. It is not different with the canvas function for chatgpt, or actually the Gemini Canvas tool, it is clearly based on. Think of it as a cross between a collaborative document and a study planner.
You can start with a prompt about a long-term project to learn something, then press the Create canvas button and watch the AI piece together a draft, organize resources and answer follow-up questions when you fine-tune or elaborate your goals. Plus, you can continue to return to it even if you close the tab. Continuity is crucial if you want to do more than just a traditional Google search that ends when you close the window.
Google also has plans for canvas to support its own file uploads, so it will absorb some of the skills of AI Mode’s General Toolkit. In fact, it seems that AI mode will eventually look like a lot like notebooklm, though not with any AI-built podcasts.
Search live
The third and possibly most futuristic upgrade to AI mode is searching live. If canvas is about long -term thinking, Search is Live after real -time response.
Search live embedders Google Lens with Google’s project Astra AI to provide answers based on the video you show it. Using Search Live, you can point your phone’s camera to any problem from a math equation on a page to an incorrect behavior and begin to ask the AI questions as you film. The camera’s feed becomes the context of AI’s answer as it uses what you see and say to answer with solutions, and links, as if you are facetiming of a friend with all the answers.
This kind of live help could make people consider what they expect from AI tools in terms of both accuracy and immediacy. Instead of an empty search box, it looks at something, talks about it and delivers useful answers right away.
This trend continues with Google lens upgrades coming to Chrome. Google changes the address bar so that when you click it, you will have the opportunity to “ask Google about this page” and get answers about whatever site, pdf, slide or other content is open in Chrome. You will even be able to get AI listings of any section you highlight. You can then utilize AI mode to go deeper and essentially use the web page as a starting point for a more in-depth project.
All of these changes may not feel like night revolutions, but they can be the basis of a new way of thinking about searching. And as AI -Chatbots intervene in what was once Google’s undisputed management in looking for things online, the company is undoubtedly in search of competitive answers and in the process that delivers AI search upgrades like these upgrades to us.
