- Google’s new Flight Deals uses AI to find trips based on conversational requests
- It uses Gemini 2.5 to interpret descriptions of feelings and vague time frames to compile deals
- Flight Deals is rolling out in beta across the U.S., Canada, and India
Google is using Gemini AI to reinvent the travel agent experience, turning conversations into airplane tickets. The new Flight Deals product, which is now in beta, adds AI chat to Google Flights users looking for a good deal or who are still trying to decide where and when they want to travel.
Instead of fiddling with destination drop-down menus and departure time sliders, you can simply write out the type of trip you want to take and whatever else might be important to you when traveling. Instead of an airport code and a date, you can pick a season, the vibe of the location, and how you feel about very early flights. Gemini will then scan real-time pricing from hundreds of airlines and deliver up-to-date options tailored to your request.
This isn’t a replacement for traditional Google Flights. That familiar grid of dates and sliders is still alive and well. But Google thinks Flight Deals is perfect for the flexible (or just indecisive) traveler. Think of it like that one friend who is not only really good at finding travel bargains, but truly loves finding them for friends.
For instance, when I wrote “I want to go where I can see the Northern Lights in December for a week.” I had suggestions for Alaska, Iceland, and Norway with some good deals across December. When I requested “Somewhere with mountains and great food in the spring,” I saw flights from March to June to Denver, Munich, Auckland, and more.
Flitting AI
The more casual your phrasing, the more it has to work with. The AI will attempt to match not just the location but the spirit of your request. Gemini 2.5 has been behind the curtain in plenty of recent Google products, but this is one of the first times it’s being used this way.
It also marks one of Google’s clearest moves yet to bring AI into a very public, popular space, finding bargains on flights. Airline tickets are perfect for enticing people to try AI, as buying them is a common, but not everyday experience, and expensive enough that people will make an effort to find a good deal without being so expensive that people wouldn’t trust AI to help them when it’s still possible for the technology to fail.
Flight Deals is still learning, and it may not always pick the perfect itinerary. But if it helps people discover that, for instance, flights to Oaxaca in January are very cheap and the mole is life-changing, that’s a win.