After three years of struggling to maintain up with ChatGPT, Google is racing to roll out synthetic intelligence instruments that construct on its grip over on-line search.
The corporate’s Gemini AI app now has 900 million month-to-month customers, twice as many as final 12 months. Its AI-powered search function, AI Mode, can be taking off, with a claimed one billion month-to-month customers worldwide.
On Tuesday, at Google’s annual developer convention close to its California headquarters in Mountain View, CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled the subsequent step: Gemini Spark, a private AI agent out there beginning subsequent week for top-tier subscribers in the US.
Google’s search engine may even get a brand new improve for US customers this summer season: always-on AI brokers that may provide you with a warning to information, e-book actions, and handle procuring lists.
The adjustments to Google search, which the corporate stated have been its largest in 25 years, may even see a widened search field to make room for extra difficult queries folks use for chatbots.
“I like how search has turn out to be much less about particular person queries and feels extra like an ongoing dialog, giving customers deeper insights and connecting you with the vastness of the online,” Pichai informed journalists.
Most of the options trip a wave of “agentic” AI that has gripped Silicon Valley since Austrian developer Peter Steinberger in late 2025 launched OpenClaw — a platform that lets AI e-book flights, handle emails and construct apps from chat prompts.
OpenAI employed OpenClaw’s creator earlier this 12 months and the tech giants are actually racing to carry agentic options to mainstream customers, regardless of safety considerations and the hovering computing prices that include them.
To remain forward of rivals Anthropic and OpenAI, Google on Tuesday additionally launched the newest model of its AI mannequin, Gemini 3.5 Flash.
Google says it runs 4 instances quicker than high competing fashions — together with Anthropic’s Claude Opus and OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5.5 — whereas acting at the same stage.
The mannequin is now the default throughout the Gemini app, AI Mode search and different Google companies. A extra highly effective model, Gemini 3.5 Professional, is predicted subsequent month.
Google additionally introduced it was teaming up with OpenAI on one entrance: to assist cease the unfold of pretend or manipulated content material, the ChatGPT maker has adopted SynthID, Google’s software for invisibly watermarking AI-generated pictures.
Finish of clicks?
Google’s rising AI options may spell bother for information web sites and on-line publishers.
By protecting customers inside its personal apps and instruments, Google makes it much less probably that individuals will click on by way of to exterior web sites — slicing into their site visitors and advert income.
Google searches already finish 58 p.c of the time with out customers clicking on any web site, in accordance with a lawsuit filed towards the corporate by Penske Media, which publishes the Hollywood Reporter and Rolling Stone.
In Europe, a significant publishers’ group has complained to the European Fee, saying Google makes use of information content material to gasoline its AI summaries with out paying for it.
France is the one main European nation the place AI Mode remains to be unavailable, and stays on the middle of a bitter struggle between Google and French publishers.
Nevertheless, Google’s authorized troubles usually are not restricted to Europe.
A US court docket discovered it responsible of illegally monopolizing on-line search in 2024, and the corporate may nonetheless be pressured to interrupt up elements of its enterprise.
The Justice Division in February appealed a ruling that had stopped wanting making Google promote its Chrome browser.
A listening to is just not anticipated till the top of the 12 months on the earliest, or probably 2027.
© 2026 AFP