Google has made the biggest changes to its search bar in the company’s history.
Since its founding, the Google search box has been perhaps the most famous part of the internet. Users could type in a search query – from news to DIY help – and see information taken from the internet.
Over the years, however, those results have become progressively more complex, with the company adding rich experiences and AI tools intended to make the search results more detailed and personalised.
Now, it will make the biggest changes yet. Google is turning that famous search box into a way of speaking with artificial intelligence.
Users will be able to ask long, complicated questions and have them answered, follow up with further questions and even be able to take actions, such as helping users to create an event invitation if they were searching for help with one.
In recent years, as the use of AI has grown, Google has looked to add more of the technology into its search results. That has not always gone well: when it first rolled out its AI overviews, it was criticised for showing misinformation taken from parts of the internet, infamously encouraging people to use glue to make pizza.
The changes have also received criticism from the websites and publishers who host the content that is used to train Google’s systems. While Google said that search queries hit a record high last month, many websites report that actual visits have declined since the changes keep people within Google’s products rather than allowing them to browse the web.
Google has also added an “AI mode” to its search engine that allows users to ask artificial intelligence about their questions. The new system will integrate that AI mode as well as the overviews, as well as providing new AI-powered features.
“Google Search is AI search,” said Elizabeth Reid, the Google staff member who runs its search business. She said that the changes were the biggest ever made to the tool since the website was launched as a search engine in 1998.
The new system will even be able to use AI coding tools to generate richer responses to queries. If someone asks a complicated question about astrophysics, for instance, the search results will be able to generate a chart made to answer it.
Google’s updates will appear across its products. Users will be able to add a photo to the Chrome search bar, for instance, and will be taken to AI mode to ask questions about it or dig deeper.
The changes were revealed by Google at its annual I/O event in California. For years, it used that event to show off new software and hardware innovations – but it has in recent years become largely about the company’s AI work.
It did however announce that it was planning to build “intelligent eyewear” with glasses companies such as Warby Parker. The launch recalls the failed attempt to push Google Glass, which featured a camera to allow users to see information about the world, for instance.
The technology was widely mocked, and Google shut down most of its production in 2015. In the years since, however, companies such as Meta have launched their own smart glasses and other rivals including Apple are working on their own version of the technology.
The new glasses will offer similar experiences – allowing their wearer to look at a painting and hear information about it, for instance – and will be available later this year, Google said.
