Google will further expand its experimental AI Mode to search for live event tickets and bookable slots for beauty and wellness services, making your search terms the start of a sprint through an abbreviated version of the research process that serves up purchase links you can manually confirm. The feature, launched as part of a Google Labs experiment that concentrates on agentic tasks, represents a cautious yet significant step toward artificial intelligence assuming errands, rather than just questions.
What Changed and How AI Mode Finds Tickets and Appointments
You ask AI Mode to “find tickets to The National in Chicago for under $120 next month” or “locate a Saturday afternoon haircut within five miles” if you are previously enrolled in the Agentic experiment in Google Labs.
The system takes a few minutes to canvass options but serves up neat results with pricing and availability, along with easy links to complete on the provider site. You are always in charge of the process — AI Mode does not auto-buy or hold seats.
TechCrunch first noticed an update to the experiment page from Google. AI Mode had already been able to search restaurant reservations. Tickets and appointments “widen the scope to categories in which inventory turns fast, prices exhibit wide variation and comparison is a chore.”
Why This Is Significant for Fans and Event Businesses
Coming across a fair-priced ticket before the theater or concert sells out is a common frustration, particularly when you want to compare offerings from different sellers and venue websites with uneven search tools. An assistant that is focused on availability and price could also cut down on tab switching and guessing. The timing is also prescient: Live Nation announced that more than 145 million concertgoers attended its events in 2023, a sign of the sustained consumer demand for events with inventory that moves quickly and pricing freedom.
For salons and wellness providers, AI-powered discovery could spur last-minute bookings and help to fill the gaps left by manual browsing. Merchants might see a more seamless funnel between search and purchase if Google ultimately integrates real-time inventory and holds (it does not do that today).
Early Impressions, Performance, and Notable Trade-offs
During early hands-on use, I found that AI Mode consistently surfaced usable tickets and tended to come up with lower prices regardless of whether it was initially requested. Speed is mixed: sometimes the automated search takes longer than a savvy user canvassing a known seller individually. It doesn’t have a way to skip lines, log in, or bypass CAPTCHAs or 2FA checks on ticketing platforms. Think of it as a conscientious scout, not a buyer.
Since you do the checkout yourself, it is less likely that AI will misclick or make an incorrect purchase. But the handoff by hand means precious time won’t be gained today. The true efficiency comes if Google deepens integrations into ticketing and scheduling backends, so that AI Mode could confirm, with even higher confidence, seat tiers, fees, and refund policies before you click out.
Privacy, Safety, and How Google Handles Your Checkout
With checkout being manual, your payment credentials don’t go through the assistant at all. Like other Google Labs experiments, your data may be used to improve relevancy; users may also view or edit their activity in the “Google Account” settings menu. The existing protections may make sense for high-ticket items like event tickets, where availability and prices can fluctuate from moment to moment.
The Bigger Picture for Agentic AI and Shopping Tasks
Agents in the style of assistants are evolving from chat to tasks: scanning options, considering trade-offs, and coming back with actions you can take. Competitors are experimenting with similar flows for travel, shopping, and reservations, all while contending with anti-bot defenses site by site. The winners will combine reliable data extraction with formal partnerships or APIs that enable fast, policy-compliant handoffs to checkout.
For the time being, Google’s approach is intentionally tepid. AI Mode can look up concert tickets and salon appointments, boil things down intelligently for you, and serve up crisp links to their sources. It’s accessible to consumers who have signed up to participate in the Agentic features experiment at Google Labs, and it’s a revealing peek at how consumer AI may soon take care of more of the middleman drudgery between intent and purchase — without prying your wallet out from between your very own hot little fingers.
