Google is expanding its “AI Mode” to the UK, following launches in the US and India. The new feature appears as an extra tab in Google Search and in the Google app for Android and iOS, letting users ask complex questions via text, voice, or image and get AI-generated answers with additional links. AI Mode runs on a customized version of Gemini 2.5 and uses query fan-out techniques to break down questions into smaller subtopics, searching them all at once.

Google says AI Mode should result in a “greater diversity” of visited websites—a phrase that sidesteps the more important effect: less traffic flowing to the open web. Even the “light” version, called AI Overviews, has already led to a sharp drop in web clicks.