How to use Google’s new AI agents to go beyond your standard searches

2:50 AM IST · May 20, 2026

At theGoogle I/O 2026keynote, the tech giantrevealed new agentic capabilities in Search, where users can create, customize, and manage multiple AI agents to stay updated on topics of interest. The announcement is part of Google’s larger push toward agentic AI systems that can take initiative and assist with ongoing tasks instead of answering one question at a time. Unlike traditional search tools that respond only when prompted, Google’s information agents are designed to operate continuously in the background, 24/7, helping users stay informed about their interests without needing to repeatedly search for the same information every day. Instead of delivering a list of links, the agents can synthesize information from multiple sources, explain why something matters, compare perspectives, and provide actionable insights. In many ways, the agents represent the next evolution of Google Alerts, the notification service Google launched in 2003. However, these agents are designed to go beyond simple notifications. For instance, someone following the stock market could create an information agent focused on specific companies, share price, or economic trends. The agent could monitor market activity throughout the day, track breaking news, summarize earnings reports, alert users when major changes happen, and provide summaries and links to learn more. It could also help with everyday tasks, such as tracking flight prices for upcoming trips, monitoring sports teams and live events, following breaking news, keeping tabs on housing or job market trends, and tracking weather or traffic. To use the feature, users can open AI Mode in Search and enter a prompt. For example: “Keep me updated on nearby movie tickets for ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu.’” When something relevant appears, the Google app sends a push notification. You’ll also see your active tracked topics in your AI Mode history, where you can jump back in to manage, refine, or turn off an alert. Information agents will be available this summer. The company is first rolling them out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S., then to additional markets later on. In addition to these information agents, Google also introduced amajor redesign of Search, including what it describes as a reimagined “intelligent search box,” the company’s biggest change to Search in more than 25 years. The new interface is designed to support longer, more conversational queries. There’s also a new AI-powered query suggestion system that goes beyond traditional autocomplete, helping users craft nuanced and context-aware searches. Google Search as you know it is over Google updates Gemini app to take on ChatGPT and Claude Google introduces Gemini Spark, a 24/7 agent assistant with Gmail integration How to use Google’s new information agents

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In the Weights is your new AI-centric vanity search

Anyone who’s Googled themselves recently knows that it doesn’t quite hit the way it used to. Sure, there’severything going on with Google search itself, but there’s also an inescapable feeling that web search isn’t the canonical source of information that it used to be, with just as many people learning about who you and I might be from chatbots. Thomas Dimson and Joey Flynn had a similar feeling, leading them to createIn the Weights. The“weights”in question are the numerical parameters that shape an AI model’s training and output, so the websitepurportsto measure how well “a model is able to recall someone without using tools like web search.” “Being in the weights means your existence was deemed important in the process of creating superhuman artificial intelligence,” the website says. To achieve this, In the Weights supposedly queries different models (including Grok, Gemini, multiple versions of GPT, Claude, and Llama, plus lesser known models) with a question similar to, “Who is <name>? Give up to 10 results, each with a short description and confidence.” It then “cluster[s] similar descriptions together and assign[s] a strength score.” For example,this humble tech bloggerreceived a strength score of 641, placing me in the top 6% of names. I was feeling pretty good until I saw thatmultipleTechCrunchcolleaguesscored even higher. And theleaderboardhas been shifting as I write this post, with “Home Alone” star Macaulay Culkin currently in the top slot with a strength score of 988, neck-and-neck with opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. The results also show which models returned which answers for a given name, and they highlight potential hallucinations — apparently GPT-5.4 Mini says that Anthony Ha is an “ambiguous name form that could refer to multiple people with the initials A.H.A.” Asked why he built In the Weights, Dimson told TechCrunch via email that he and Flynn were looking to “get the creative juices flowing again” after leaving OpenAI (which they both joined throughthe acquisition of their design startup Global Illumination). Dimson said he was thinking about how “Google vanity searches are the wrong objective in 2026 as more traffic moves to LLMs” and about the fact that “so many lives are encoded somehow in a bunch of floating point numbers inside the AI brain.” He also said the direction of the site was “sealed” bya tongue-in-cheek blog postriffing on AI weights and Terry Bisson’s classic short story“They’re Made Out of Meat.” “Reception has been insane so far, we thought this would be a mild curiosity but it seems like it has struck a nerve of wanting to see if you live forever in the super intelligence (the comparison factor doesn’t hurt either!)” Dimson added. While I’m not as convinced that being “remembered” by a chatbot is a guaranteed ticket to immortality, I can’t deny that I find the results both intriguing and jealousy-inducing, especially since they’re codified in an easy-to-compare score. (AI critic Anthony Moserscoffedthat this is “literally the same as asking 13 chatbots to tell you about yourself.”) Also helping: The fact that the site features a cute,Nintendo-inspiredretro design. Dimson said he plans to dig in further into why different models in the same series return different results, which models are biased towards different types of people, and which people “should have a Wikipedia article but don’t.”

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Signal’s Meredith Whittaker wants you to remember that AI chatbots ‘are not your friends’

Asked about the privacy implications of chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, Signal President Meredith Whittaker answered, “These are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not sentient interlocutors.” Whittaker made those comments ina broader interview with Bloombergabout policy, privacy, and Signal. She acknowledged that she uses AI tools “to format a document here and there,” but insisted, “I don’t ask them questions. I’m very serious about my thinking and writing, and I don’t want the process of working through an idea […] to be foreclosed or eclipsed by the response of a system that’s averaging what’s already out there.” As for Microsoft AI CEOMustafa Suleyman’s predictionthat users could let Microsoft Copilot handle all their Christmas shopping this year, Whittaker argued this scenario — where Copilot is eavesdropping on the family group chat to determine who wants want — means giving it “access to my credit card, my browser, my Signal, the ability to message my siblings on my behalf, my home address [and] my calendar.” “What you’ve just described is a system with very pervasive access across multiple applications and services,” Whittaker said. “In the context of Signal, it would constitute a kind of a backdoor.”

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Nobel laureate John Jumper is leaving DeepMind for rival Anthropic

John Jumper, who shared a recent Nobel Prize in chemistry, announced Friday that he’s making the leap to Anthropic after “nearly 9 years” at Google DeepMind. Ina post on X, Jumper wrote that DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis “took a real chance letting me lead the AlphaFold team just six months after finishing my PhD, and the entire GDM team taught me so much about how to do great science.” Jumper (pictured above right, with Hassabis) added, “GDM is a special place, and I’ll still be excited to hear about what amazing things they discover next.” Bloomberg reports that Jumper wasa key member of Google’s team developing coding tools, which the company has struggled to sell to businesses. Character AI co-founder Noam Shazeer also announced this week thathe’s leaving DeepMind— though in Shazeer’s case, he’s joining OpenAI. Jumper and Hassabis won the Nobel Prize in 2024for their work on AlphaFold, an AI model that can predict the 3D structure of proteins based on their genetic sequences.

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Nobel-Winning AlphaFold Scientist John Jumper Leaves Google DeepMind for Anthropic

For his work on AlphaFold, Jumper shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Demis Hassabis and scientist David Baker.

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