Media reporting shows that Google began testing this feature in March, after AI Overviews has been active on the site for over a year. AI Overviews was said to have 1.5 billion users a year ago, so it’s likely that AI Mode will have quite a few people taking the model’s responses, rather than clicking through hyperlinks.

"AI Mode is where we will first bring our frontier capabilities into search," CEO Sundar Pichai said. What's in Google's AI Mode? AI Mode will exist as an extra tab on your normal

Google on Tuesday unleashed another wave of artificial intelligence technology to accelerate a year-old makeover of its search engine that is changing the way people get information and curtailing the flow of internet traffic to websites.