Google Said to Be Testing a New AI Overviews Animation for Search

Google might be testing a new animation for its artificial intelligence (AI) search summary feature AI Overviews. On Saturday, a social media user posted about the new loading animation that replaces the existing blue lines that show up when the AI is preparing a summary for a searched query. As per the post, the new animation has a blue and purple roaming spotlight effect, which is similar to what users see with the Gemini AI assistant on Android and Gemini Live.

AI Overviews Might Be Getting a New Animation

Reddit user Gaiden206 posted a screenshot of AI Overviews on the Bard subreddit on December 28 highlighting the new animation. Several other users in the comments also reported seeing the new animation. Separately, a 9to5Google report also confirmed its existence and added that it is currently showing up for some users and has not been launched globally. Gadgets 360 staff members were also not able to verify the presence of the new animation.

The new animation in AI Overviews
Photo Credit: Reddit/Gaiden206

Based on the screenshot shared in the post, the new animation shows up after a query has been searched on Google Search and before a summary is generated. Currently, users will see “blue lines” indicating that AI Overviews is generating a response. However, with the new animation, the tech giant is said to be replacing it with a blue and purple roaming spotlight. A similar animation style can also be seen on the Gemini AI assistant and Gemini Live.

Apart from the animation, the post also showcased several other minor changes. Currently, the wait lines (prompted messages shown while the AI is generating the response) include “Searching” and “Generating”. But in the screenshot, the interface has some new wait lines including “Looking this up”, “Working on it”, and “Putting it all together”.

While these are just quality-of-life changes, Google might be aiming to make its AI Overviews more appealing to users and make the load times less mundane. This would align with the company CEO Sundar Pichai's statements made to employees at a recent strategy meeting. As per the report, Pichai highlighted the need to scale the consumer side of its AI products and solve real user problems as the focus area for the next year.