Browser maker and Google Search alternative Brave announced on Monday that it is expanding its AI-powered search suite with a new feature called Ask Brave. The tool builds on the company’s existing AI Answers system, but instead of quick summaries, it provides detailed, report-style responses enriched with contextual media.
Unlike traditional search modes, users don’t need to toggle settings to activate Ask Brave. The search engine automatically determines whether a query should return a standard result, a summarized AI answer, or a detailed Ask Brave response. Users can also trigger the feature directly by tapping the “Ask” button next to the search bar, selecting the Ask tab on results pages, or adding “??” to the end of their query when Brave is set as the default search engine.
“While AI Answers give our users quick summaries, Ask Brave provides longer answers, follow-ups, and a chat mode enhanced with Deep Research, and most importantly, contextually relevant enrichments such as videos, news articles, products, businesses, shopping, and more,” said Josep M. Pujol, Brave’s Chief of Search, in a statement.
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The Ask Brave output more closely resembles results from AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Perplexity, with links, video embeds, and image carousels built into the responses. Users can also ask the chatbot to reformat the output or generate follow-up answers.
Brave said the system leverages its own search API for grounding results, paired with deep research on certain queries to improve accuracy. Importantly, the company emphasized privacy: chats are encrypted and deleted after 24 hours of inactivity.
The launch comes as AI-driven search becomes a competitive frontier. Google recently expanded its AI-powered search mode into multiple languages, including Spanish, while Brave is positioning itself as a privacy-first alternative. With over 15 million AI answers generated daily, Brave expects Ask Brave to significantly increase usage across its platform.
