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UPDATE: Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering for Search at Google, says this setting showed up in the Canary build by accident. "This was an error. We're not planning to make AI Mode the default for Chrome searches," he tweeted.
Original Story:
Google is reportedly testing a new Chrome feature that allows users to route all their search queries directly to AI Mode. Windows Report noticed it in the Chrome Canary build and says it looks more ready than the usual experiments.
Currently, search queries in Chrome return results in the "All" tab by default. The page starts with an AI Overview for most queries and then leads you to organic blue links. However, you can click "Show more" under the AI Overview and enter AI Mode by typing a follow-up query in the chatbot box that appears. There's also an AI Mode tab up top.
With the under-development feature in Chrome Canary, all the queries you drop in the address or search bar take you automatically to the AI Mode box.
It's not enabled by default and is currently a hidden flag in Canary. For now, it's called “Fulfill Searchbox Queries in AI Mode,” and its description says that it “redirects all normal searchbox queries in the omnibox and realbox to AI mode threads. – Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS.”
According to a video shared by Windows Report, you can enable the feature in Chrome Settings. The page gives you three options: Default, Enable, and Disable. The Enable button here suggests that you may be able to use the feature for just a specific browsing session.
Canary is where Google tests all its browser features before launching them in a stable version of Chrome. Not all the features make the final cut, and the author’s note for this feature carries the same message: “This is just for exploration. There are no current plans to push this live.”
That said, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Google push more AI features into the Search experience. In fact, at I/O last month, Google announced what it called “the biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years" within AI Mode. That resulted in a surge of app installs for privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo.