Google is testing new ways to lure people into using AI overviews

There’s no denying that Google Search’s AI overviews are here to stay. While those short point-wise summaries, rather than traditional search results, may suffice for basic queries, Google has been testing additional functions that let you do more with AI overviews.

In late 2024, we learned that Google was experimenting with AI-generated snippets nested within AI overviews. These snippets would emerge when a portion of the text from the AI overviews was highlighted. And now, we’re seeing more evidence of that evolving with the introduction of more useful controls.

We’re looking at a tip from Discord user RayDacted about new controls in AI overviews. According to the tip, Google is testing features to explain a particular chunk of text in the AI overview or search for images related to that specific highlight. There’s a third button that lets you just copy the text, but its functionality may be redundant as the standard overlay also shows up on top when the text is selected.

The last time we observed this behavior, selecting text would automatically display another context overlay on top of the existing AI overviews, and my colleague Stephen Schenck rightly referred to them as “AI overviews within AI overviews.” The three buttons we have seen now give users more control over what they want to do with the highlight, even though the results may be the same as earlier.

Interestingly, the nested snippet appears to display a shorter summary and provides more visibility to sources. Given the limited rollout of this functionality, we cannot comment on whether these changes are final or if we can expect more controls to be added to AI overviews by default.

This functionality could be a part of Google’s broader change to AI overviews, which may also include its plans to insert AI-generated summaries in your Discover feed, which we learned about earlier this week.