Google's Circle to Search Gets AI Mode Integration for Enhanced Conversational Queries

Circle to Search now lets you have deeper conversations about what's on your screen

With this change, however, any queries are now automatically taken up by AI Mode. This aligns with our findings from an earlier Authority Insights post from June, in which AI Mode addressed queries. Take a look in the vide below: This improvement could strengthen the integration between Circle to Search and AI Mode, helping users benefit from the latter's recently added capabilities for better travel planning. AI Mode recently also added features to help students with their homework and research, such as adding images to math or science problems or just asking it about key events in history, and these tasks might become much easier with the search bar's new placement.

Follow up questions on Circle to Search now default to AI Mode

After successfully making its way to Circle to Search (CtS), Google's AI Mode is now receiving a critical update that makes it all the more useful (and conversational) for your quick on-screen queries. For reference, Google's improved CtS with AI Mode first rolled out to Samsung's latest foldables earlier this year. It subsequently expanded to other Android devices. Since its rollout, the enhanced version has allowed users to scribble their screens and get results powered by AI Mode. However, this only applies to the initial query and not follow-up questions. That limitation appears to be now be in the process of being phased out. Related 7 ingenious ways to use Google's Circle to Search feature Search what's on your screen with ease Posts 1 By Faith Leroux Jan 26, 2025 As highlighted by the folks over at Android Authority after digging into Google app version 16.47.49, CtS should now return answers to additional text queries directly via AI Mode. Before the update, said additional queries defaulted to regular image search with standard, non-AI results. The new build introduces a new search bar at the bottom of the CtS results UI, as seen in the screenshot below. Follow-up queries submitted through the new search bar are taken up by AI Mode. Teased in July, delivered in November Old (left), new (right) It's worth noting that Google teased this functionality all the way back in July, but it seemingly never made its way out widely. "Simply long press the home button or navigation bar, then circle, tap, or gesture on what you want to search. When our systems determine an AI response to be most helpful, an AI Overview will appear in your results. From there, scroll to the bottom and tap "dive deeper with AI Mode" to ask follow-up questions and explore content across the web that's relevant to your visual search," wrote the tech giant at the time, which is exactly what we're seeing now! Google app's version 16.47.49 hasn't rolled out for me just yet. If it has rolled out to you, are you seeing the new search bar at the bottom of the results? Let us know in the comments below!