Google has introduced agentic AI capabilities to its AI Mode search feature that can help users find restaurants and make reservations automatically. The new functionality, currently limited to Google AI Ultra subscribers paying $250 per month, represents Google’s latest attempt to bring AI agents into practical consumer applications after previous efforts like Duplex failed to gain widespread adoption.
How it works: AI Mode now leverages Project Mariner, Google’s AI agent technology, and partnerships with booking platforms to streamline restaurant discovery and reservation booking.
- Users provide details like party size, date, time, location, and preferred cuisine in a single text prompt.
- AI Mode responds with a curated list of restaurants showing available reservation slots, complete with AI-generated summaries highlighting what each establishment is known for.
- Clicking on a time slot redirects users to the reservation platform where they manually complete the booking.
- The system integrates with OpenTable, Resy, Tock, Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek, Booksy, and other booking services.
Limited availability: The agentic restaurant booking feature has significant restrictions on access.
- Only available to Google AI Ultra plan subscribers ($250 per month) in the US.
- Users must separately sign up for the “Agentic capabilities in AI Mode experiment” through Google Labs.
- This premium pricing puts the feature out of reach for most consumers.
Personalized recommendations for everyone: Google is also rolling out AI Mode personalization features for users who don’t subscribe to the premium plan.
- The system analyzes previous chat history and browsing behavior on Search and Maps to deliver tailored food and dining suggestions.
- Users can opt out by disabling search personalization in their Google account settings.
- A new sharing feature allows users to generate public links to their AI Mode responses, letting others continue the conversation and ask follow-up questions.
The bigger picture: This launch echoes Google’s earlier Duplex experiment, which could make phone calls to book appointments but raised privacy concerns and never achieved mainstream adoption.
- After initial testing, AI Mode expanded to all users in the US, UK, and India earlier this year.
- Following positive user feedback, Google is now expanding the feature to 180 additional countries and regions.
- The restaurant booking capability represents a more practical application of AI agents compared to Duplex’s more intrusive phone-calling approach.
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