Google is significantly enhancing its online search capabilities by integrating generative artificial intelligence (AI), a move that embraces the technology despite ongoing concerns about its potential impact on the company's established ad-based business model. This strategic push comes amid intensifying competition, particularly with OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has also begun incorporating search engine features into its popular chatbot.

A key development in this integration is the introduction of features that allow users to transform online searches into conversations. As of Friday, Google began enabling people to receive spoken summaries of their query results through new functionalities. One such feature, 'Audio Overviews,' utilizes Gemini AI models to quickly synthesize search results into a conversational style, offering a convenient and hands-free method for information absorption. Google highlights that this allows users to grasp information while multitasking or simply preferring an audio experience, with relevant web pages conveniently displayed within the audio player on the search results page for deeper exploration.

Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, recently unveiled a new AI mode in Google Search, which represents an evolution beyond the existing AI Overviews. The nascent AI mode delves deeper than AI Overviews, which already present answers from the tech giant's generative AI capabilities above the traditional blue links to websites and advertisements. Since its debut slightly over a year ago, AI Overviews in search have seen substantial adoption, now reaching more than 1.5 billion users across various countries, according to Pichai. This expansion underscores Google's commitment to embedding advanced AI directly into its core search product, reshaping how users interact with online information.