With AI Mode, Google aims to feed curiosities during 2026 Olympics
- - With AI Mode, Google aims to feed curiosities during 2026 Olympics
Mitchell Northam, USA TODAYFebruary 7, 2026 at 12:09 AM
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When the Olympics roll around every four years, fans get exposed to obscure sports and unfamiliar phrases.
More than two decades ago when Kate Johnson was a competitive rower for the U.S. national team — winning a silver medal at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens — she often found herself explaining to people who were new to rowing what the expression “catching a crab” meant. And then Johnson had more questions about it herself: Where did that come from? How often does it happen? What team does it happen to the most in the Olympics?
Now, Google can provide all those answers — and any other fans might have about sports at the 2026 Winter Olympics — pretty quickly with its new AI Mode tool in search.
For example, here’s what AI Mode says about catching a crab: “a rowing error where an oar blade becomes trapped underwater by the boat's momentum.” It’s a phrase, according to AI Mode’s results, that dates back to the 1780s as a “humorous way to describe the sensation of an oar being pinned underwater. It felt as though a giant crab had reached up and grabbed the blade, refusing to let go,” AI Mode says. It can happen due to “final sprint fatigue” or environmental factors, famously happening to the women’s team from Germany at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and the men’s British team in Paris in 2024.
“AI Mode, at the end of the day, feeds people's curiosity and helps them understand kind of the how and why behind their interests,” says Johnson, who is now Google’s global marketing director for sports and entertainment partnerships. “It's going beyond just a general search. That is what AI Mode is going to allow people to do. And so, that's what I'm excited to see happen with these games, is just people going deeper with their general curiosities.”
During the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics on Friday in Milan, Google is debuting a campaign around its AI Mode called “How is it possible?” It’s aiming to showcase some of the exciting physical accomplishments of Team USA athletes and attempting to lure fans into using AI Mode in search to explore these highlights in depth.
Commercials for AI Mode will feature Team USA athletes like snowboarder Chloe Kim, skier Lindsey Vonn, figure skater Ilia Malinin and snowboarder Red Gerard.
Through the Olympics, Johnson hopes folks understand AI Mode will allow them to ask longer and deeper questions that will result in a more detailed response, rather than a brief search query with short answers.
“The Olympics is actually such a great use case for AI Mode,” Johnson told USA Today Sports. “If you think about the complexity of an Olympic sport — you know, explaining a triple axel or the G-force of a bobsled — it’s a great place to feed that curiosity and go deeper on that curiosity, because it's going to pull from the depth of the Internet.”
Since the launch of AI Mode, Google says it saw daily queries double in the U.S. and people are engaging in longer, more complex sessions. Queries in AI Mode are three-times longer than traditional searches, according to data provided by Google. Many AI Mode queries are leading to follow-up questions too.
So, after asking what a triple axel is, a user could follow up and ask, how do figure skaters not get dizzy from spinning? Or how does the G-Force in figure skating spins compare to what a bobsledder might experience? AI Mode provides answers.
Google is also partnering with Olympic athletes to give fans a behind the scenes look on how they’re using AI Mode on the ground in Milan. Broadcasters with NBC will also use the tool to explain complex details of a sport to their audience.
“My hope is everybody in the (International Broadcasting Center) at the Olympic Games has Google AI open on their app or open on their desktop right now, because it will help them immensely,” Johnson says. “Rather than just going in for sports scores, now you can go in for the personal history, the family background and details all in one. AI Mode will give you more of a comprehensive answer.”
Having been a former athlete herself, Johnson also hopes AI Mode helps elevate the conversation around women’s sports.
“The more content we can get out there about women's sports, the better for everyone,” Johnson says. “Because the more content there is on the Internet, the more it solves the bias challenge that we have.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: With AI Mode, Google aims to feed curiosities during 2026 Olympics
Source: “AOL Sports”
