The New York Times: “…The arrival of AI Mode underscores how new technology is redefining what it means to search for something online. For decades, a web search involved looking up keywords, like “most reliable car brands,” to show a list of relevant websites. Now, with generative A.I., the technology that powers chatbots by using complex language models to guess what words belong together, you can ask more specific questions or make complicated requests. That could include directing it to create a chart comparing the five most reliable 2025 sedans. Google, which has already been showing A.I.-generated summaries on its search pages for the last year, said AI Mode was a new frontier for search that would complement — but not yet replace — its traditional counterpart. What’s unique about AI Mode is that the technology stitches together data from Google’s vast empire of internet services to provide an answer to a query. When you type a question, it could pull data from search queries on Google.com, location information on Google Maps and Google’s shopping data on consumer products. To help assess whether A.I. is the future of search, I tested the new tool against traditional Google searches for a multitude of personal tasks over the last week, including shopping for a toddler car seat, preparing for a Memorial Day barbecue and understanding the plot twists of a popular video game. The results were mixed, with lots of hits but also lots of misses, so I encourage people to use AI Mode with caution. Here’s how it went…”