By Stuart Kerr, Technology Correspondent
Published: 02 August 2025
Last Updated: 02 August 2025
Contact: liveaiwire@gmail.com | Twitter: @LiveAIWire
Author Bio: About Stuart Kerr
AI Mode is changing how we search. With its latest global expansion, Google has introduced major upgrades to AI Mode, including PDF and image uploads, a planning workspace called Canvas, and live video input through Search Live. These enhancements aren’t just features—they signal a shift in how we interact with information.
AI Mode, previously limited to early test markets, now rolls out across the UK, enabling users to pose complex, multimodal queries right from their desktop. It's no longer about typing in a few keywords. With AI Mode, users can upload PDFs or snapshots, get instant answers, and build live documents that persist between sessions.
A New Kind of Query
The addition of PDF and image uploads allows for deep context recognition. Ask a question about a graph inside a document or a photo of a whiteboard, and AI Mode reads and reasons with it. This elevates it from a search bar to a knowledge assistant.
In an era where education and research rely heavily on visual content, this tool could be transformative. Google positions it as a study companion and project co-planner. With AI summarisation, semantic recognition, and follow-up capability, the platform handles layered queries like never before (Tom's Guide).
These new capabilities echo concerns raised in AI Linguistic Diversity, where multimodal systems risk overlooking cultural nuance.
Canvas: Search Becomes Workspace
Canvas is perhaps the boldest innovation. Acting as a persistent planning side-panel, it allows users to build study plans, guides, or timelines as they interact with the search engine. Instead of switching tabs, content is dragged, dropped, and expanded into structured output.
Google has positioned Canvas as the bridge between search and productivity—turning scattered results into a visual project board. Unlike traditional bookmarks, this space evolves dynamically as the user interacts with it (TechRadar).
This reflects the hidden work of Invisible Infrastructure, where backend systems reshape how search is delivered behind the scenes.
Search Live and the Visual Frontier
Search Live introduces another layer: real-time input through a device's camera. It pairs Google Lens capabilities with AI Mode to understand scenes, text, or diagrams and answer queries instantly. Whether scanning a maths problem on a chalkboard or capturing a poster at an event, the platform delivers in-the-moment context (TechCrunch).
Critics have raised concerns about Google’s growing presence in live data environments, but from a user perspective, the function brings immediacy and utility to real-world interactions.
Implications for SEO and the Web
With AI Mode generating answers on-screen, publishers worry about diminishing click-throughs. The shift to zero-click results could harm smaller content providers. Still, Google insists it maintains visible source linking within responses.
For educators, journalists, and researchers, AI Mode provides a new lens to find and structure information—but it also challenges existing paradigms of web visibility. How we optimise content may need to adapt in response.
As discussed in AI Fights Disinformation, the quality and traceability of AI-generated answers remain key to public trust.
Research-level insight into the architecture driving these innovations can be found in this MoR foundational paper and a vision-transformer implementation overview.
About the Author
Stuart Kerr is the Technology Correspondent for LiveAIWire. He writes about artificial intelligence, ethics, and how technology is reshaping everyday life. Read more