Google Announces AI-Enhanced Search and New Smart Glasses at I/O Conference
Google announced on Tuesday that it would expand its search bar, the centerpiece of the world’s most visited website, with a strong dose of artificial intelligence. The tech giant is also trying its hand at high-tech glasses again, more than a decade after wearers of its first glasses were nicknamed “glass holes” and laughed at in San Francisco.
Revolutionizing Search with AI
Google executives announced at the company’s annual conference for software developers, Google I/O, that its search box would support longer and more specific queries than before — questions more like the ones people would ask than Search’s idiosyncratic syntax. The changes will encourage users to interact directly with Google’s chatbot. The shift to search is supported by the company’s new artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3.5, announced the same day.
Executives said Gemini would make longer text predictions than currently based on what users have already typed. A daily Google search may also return more visual elements and suggestions for interacting with Google’s AI to create a calendar invitation, a plan in a spreadsheet, or another action within the Google product family.
“Google search is AI search,” said Elizabeth Reid, who oversees the product, calling Google Search’s changes the most significant in its nearly 30-year history. The updates are rolling out globally to desktop and mobile versions of Google Search on Tuesday. A video promoting the changes showed results that look more like visually augmented versions of AI previews, the bulleted summary answers currently returned by Google Search, than a list of links. Users will still be able to choose the original version of the search, the collection of links, by clicking on a tab labeled “Web”.
Gemini: A Universal Assistant
Reid said Google search queries hit an all-time high last month. Since the launch of Search’s “AI mode” a year ago, in which a user chats with a Gemini-powered bot rather than navigating to a list of links, queries to the chatbot-specific interface have doubled each quarter. If a user adds photos, videos, or documents to the Chrome browser search bar, the search will automatically switch to AI mode.
Google Gemini’s goal, said Josh Woodward, who oversees development of the flagship AI, is the creation of a “personal, proactive, persistent universal assistant.” The company announced that 900 million people use the Gemini app each month, still less than ChatGPT’s 900 million weekly users. The addition of agents to Google’s flagship search product, used by billions of people every day, marks the expansion of a niche type of AI beyond the realm of tech-savvy, business-focused users, into the realm of the broader consumer.
Guests arrive at the Google I/O 2026 technology developers conference. Photograph: Karl Mondon/AFP/Getty Images
AI Pro and Ultra Plans: New Features
For subscribers to its AI Pro and Ultra plans, Search will include the ability to create “information agents,” autonomous AI bots capable of performing in-depth searches and returning summaries or action plans to a user. A “generative user interface” feature will be able to create personalized visuals and interactive elements like dashboards based on a user’s requests. A new agent feature, Gemini Spark, will be able to access information from users’ Gmail, Google Calendar, and other Google products to perform searches, purchases, and plan upcoming trips, appointments, or recurring tasks.
Google’s New Smart Glasses
Working with partners Samsung and eyewear makers Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, Google executives unveiled “smart glasses,” a line of sunglasses and eyewear expected to go on sale in the fall. The glasses will respond to users’ voice commands to Gemini and take photos or videos with built-in cameras. Tech giant Meta has teamed up with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica to sell similar voice-activated, camera-equipped glasses, the Ray-Ban Meta, since 2021.
In 2014, Google began selling Google Glass, another optical computer, for $1,500, which was met with widespread derision and was shut down the following year. In a sign of a change in attitude, Meta sees its augmented reality glasses as a major growth area for its future business, and Google is even working on a second model of smart glasses with a display integrated into the lens, dubbed Project Aura.
Additional Announcements
Other announcements at I/O included AI coding capabilities for Gemini and cybersecurity-focused AI.
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