Google unveiling an upgrade to its Gemini-powered AI overviews, including a new feature promising to help users dig deeper into their searches.

Deirdre Bosa has the latest in today's tech check. So how does that work, Deirdre?

Hey, Zah, I'm going to tell you. So the latest push, it expands AI overviews to something called AI mode.

The pre-AI straightforward search for something like SleepTracker,

it brings up something like this, sponsored posts at the very top,

an easy way for Google to charge for ads.

The new, still experimental AI mode looks like this in Google's demo.

As you can see, it anticipates questions, and so it's powered by a custom

version of its Gemini reasoning model that uses a multi-step approach to give users a mix of

what looks like sponsored posts, plus AI-generated answers and comparisons. It then prompts for

another question, keeping the dialogue going rather than the user, entering another prompt

at the top for a whole new set of search results. So by getting a more detailed understanding

of what the user is looking for, Google says that when it does suggest a website, a merchant,

the user spends more time on it. So they say it's a better match between intent and result,

which makes advertisers

more willing to pay for placement, even if you don't have those typical 10 blue links. So in short,

guys, this is a shift to a more AI with insert. That doesn't just change how users use it. It also

changes how Google monetizes. It's blending AI discovery with its core advertising business.

Whether Google can do it fast enough, whether it works, that is still, of course, open questions.

AI native chatbots like perplexity, of course, they are testing their own ad models,

and they don't have these massively profitable businesses that they have to worry about

disrupting, like Google

...