  The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is transforming
information interaction. For decades, search engines such as Google and Bing
have been the primary means of locating relevant information for the general
population. They have provided search results in the same standard format (the
so-called "10 blue links"). The recent ability to chat via natural language
with AI-based agents and have GenAI automatically synthesize answers in
real-time (grounded in top-ranked results) is changing how people interact with
and consume information at massive scale. These two information interaction
modalities (traditional search and AI-powered chat) coexist in current search
engines, either loosely coupled (e.g., as separate options/tabs) or tightly
coupled (e.g., integrated as a chat answer embedded directly within a
traditional search result page). We believe that the existence of these two
different modalities, and potentially many others, is creating an opportunity
to re-imagine the search experience, capitalize on the strengths of many
modalities, and develop systems and strategies to support seamless flow between
them. We refer to these as panmodal experiences. Unlike monomodal experiences,
where only one modality is available and/or used for the task at hand, panmodal
experiences make multiple modalities available to users (multimodal), directly
support transitions between modalities (crossmodal), and seamlessly combine
modalities to tailor task assistance (transmodal). While our focus is search
and chat, with learnings from insights from a survey of over 100 individuals
who have recently performed common tasks on these two modalities, we also
present a more general vision for the future of information interaction using
multiple modalities and the emergent capabilities of GenAI.
