Google’s working to build AI Mode right into Chrome

AI Mode is Google’s attempt to combine its longstanding flagship product Search with a more chatbot-like experience, answering questions using info from the web by parsing and reiterating information from web pages in an interaction that feels like a plain-language conversation. Now, the company’s working on integrating that experience more directly into the Chrome browser, testing a new version of AI Mode inside Chrome Canary.

As spotted by Windows Report, the latest Chrome Canary desktop build features a version of Google’s AI Mode that opens in Chrome itself at chrome://contextual-tasks rather than directing the user to an external Google Search tab on the web. The interface is quite similar to the web implementation, showing the same Meet AI Mode heading and “Ask anything” text box.

Windows Report notes that the in-progress feature can answer questions about the tabs you have open — in the web version, to ask questions about a website you’re looking at, you have to copy and paste the page’s URL. The Canary version also suggests follow-up questions in its responses rather than as links below your conversation. These workflow differences aren’t very significant, though, and given Chrome Canary is home to experimental features, the experience may change over time.

On balance, integrating AI Mode directly into the Chrome browser likely won’t mean much to most end users right away — in this new Canary version, the experience still lives within a browser tab and doesn’t enable much in the way of new capabilities. Still, it’s interesting to see that Google’s building parts of AI Mode directly into its browser rather than fetching the entire thing from the web, a decision that could have more obvious implications for end users as time goes on.