Is Google set to make AI Mode the default search tool?

Move over, Google Search. AI Mode is here, and it isn't going anywhere.

Rumors are currently swirling around when exactly Google's AI Mode will become the default search tool on Google's homepage, replacing the classic Google Search. As we move deeper into the AI search era, many search experts believe that AI mode will inevitably replace the list of links searchers are used to seeing.

Now, a Google leader has said that this shift could be coming sooner than expected.

On Friday, Logal Kilpatrick, the lead product manager for Google AI Studio, shared that Google was making AI Mode easily accessible at a new "google.com/AI" URL.

In response to Kilpatrick's X post, a user suggested that AI Mode should be the default search experience, to which Kilpatrick responded, "soon."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

During its Q2 earnings call in late July, Google reported that AI Mode has received "very positive feedback" and "already has over 100 million monthly active users in the U.S. and India.” Since then, AI Mode has expanded its rollout into more than 180 additional countries and territories

When and if AI Mode really does replace traditional Google Search, the results could be catastrophic for the web economy. Many publishers depend on traffic from Google search results, and this traffic has declined sharply as Google embraces AI search results that often result in zero clicks.

Major publishers like The New York Times have seen significant drops in traffic from organic search traffic. The Columbia Journalism Review referred to this widespread phenomenon as the "traffic apocalypse"; the Wall Street Journal called it "AI armageddon"; and The Economist recently wrote that "AI is killing the web".

Is AI mode replacing Google Search?

The truth is that we don't know yet, and Google executives are sending mixed messages.

As Kilpatrick's response started to spread, the company's VP of Product at Google Search, Robby Stein, attempted to downplay Kilpatrick's post.

"wouldn’t read too much into this," Stein wrote on X. "we’re focusing on making it easy to access AI Mode for those who want it."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

But just as Stein said that we shouldn't read too much into what Kilpatrick wrote, we might not want to read too much into what Stein himself wrote either.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said previously that the "10 blue links" era of search is antiquated, and that AI Mode is "a total reimagining" of search for the future. In addition, the fact that Google is embracing AI search is self-evident. Google has already made its AI Overviews feature the default on its search results pages, and the quality of traditional Google Search has degraded significantly in recent years as the company focuses on AI search tools. 

Why does it matter?

Google replacing its classic Google Search tool with AI Mode would cause massive changes to the internet as we know it. Billions of Google searches are made every single day, and studies have found that Google's AI Overviews have already had significant negative impacts on publishers' web traffic. Google has consistently disputed that AI Overviews results in reduced traffic to publishers, but the company has also failed to produce any data that would make this denial convincing.

And it just doesn't seem like Google's AI tools are fit to take over. A Mashable investigation recently found that AI Overviews routinely makes errors and suffers from hallucinations.

For example, Mashable's Chris Taylor has put AI Overviews through extensive testing and was concerned with not just how wrong it could be, but how confidently wrong it could be. Oddly enough, Taylor found that in situations where AI Mode answered a query correctly, AI Overviews would get it wrong. Perhaps that's a point in AI Mode's favor, but it's still an issue overall for Google's AI products.