Google’s seemingly unrelenting quest to infuse AI into every aspect of your online life just got a lot more global in scope, with the company expanding its AI Mode in Search to over 180 new countries. AI Mode has previously only been available in the US, India and the UK, and while English remains the only supported language right now, Google says it’ll add more soon.
Google is also expanding its AI Mode’s agentic capabilities, so you can now use natural language to find restaurant reservations. Google says you can ask about getting a dinner reservation with conditions such as group size, date, location and your preference of cuisine, all of which be taken into consideration when AI Mode pulls in its results from across the web. Suggestions will be presented in list form with the available reservation slots. It’ll also provide a link to the booking page you need. Google also plans to add local service appointments and event ticketing capabilities soon, with Ticketmaster and StubHub among its partners.
AI Mode leverages Google’s web-browsing AI agent Project Mariner' its direct partners on Search and resources like Knowledge Graph and Google Maps when prompted to find you somewhere to eat. It has partnered with the likes of OpenTable, Resy and Tock to incorporate as many restaurants as possible and streamline the booking process. Right now, this feature is exclusive to those subscribed to the wildly expensive Google AI Ultra plan in the US, and can be accessed through its Labs platform. If you opt into the AI Mode experiment it can also remember your previous conversations and searches to give you results that more closely match your preferences.
Finally, if your AI-powered conversations are simply too interesting to keep to yourself, Google will now let you bring others in when you tap the "Share" button on a response. This allows your chosen contact to join the conversation at that point and ask their own follow-up questions. Google uses planning trips or parties as examples of when you might want to collaborate with someone else on an AI-assisted task. The original sender can delete shared links whenever they like.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-ai-mode-is-expanding-to-180-countries-and-adding-an-agentic-restaurant-finder-154833417.html?src=rss
