From September, Google will auto-upgrade Dynamic Search Ads and broad match campaigns to AI Max, handing more control to the machine. Advertisers who let it happen in the background will not know what changed.
A conversion lift you cannot independently verify is a claim, not a result. Treat it like one.
Google is switching a lot of advertisers to AI Max whether they choose it or not. From September, campaigns still running Dynamic Search Ads, automatically created assets or campaign-level broad match will be upgraded to AI Max automatically. AI Max is Google's layer that takes over search term matching, rewrites your ad text and expands your final URLs using AI.
Google is selling it on results. It says advertisers who turn on AI Max typically see 14% more conversions at a similar cost, and for campaigns that leaned heavily on exact and phrase match keywords, that lift jumps to 27%. Those are Google's numbers, from Google's own case studies. Worth remembering who is grading the homework.
Why it matters
AI Max hands more control to the machine and takes it away from you. That can work. It can also quietly widen what you match on, send traffic to URLs you did not pick and spend into queries you would never have chosen. The advertisers who get burned are the ones who let the upgrade happen in the background and never checked what changed.
Google says AI Max delivers up to 27% more conversions for keyword-heavy campaigns, though the figure comes from Google's own data. Source: Google via Search Engine Land.
What to do about it
Automation is fine when you know what it is doing. Let it run blind and you are back to guessing, just faster.