Google may be ready to cash in on AI, with a new report saying the company may begin charging for AI-powered search.

Google has been heavily investing in generative AI in an effort to catch up with OpenAI and Microsoft. The company’s AI was initially called “Bard” before being rebranded as “Gemini.”

According to Financial Times, via Times, Google may begin charging for AI-powered search results while keeping its traditional search free of charge. The report goes on to say that even if Google charges for its AI-powered search, it will continue to serve ads despite the premium experience.

The latter point was confirmed in a statement to Time:

“We’re not working on or considering an ad-free search experience. As we’ve done many times before, we’ll continue to build new premium capabilities and services to enhance our subscription offerings across Google. We don’t have anything to announce right now.”

“For years, we’ve been reinventing search to help people access information in the way that’s most natural to them,” the statement also said. “With our generative AI experiments in search, we’ve already served billions of queries, and we’re seeing positive search query growth in all of our major markets. We’re continuing to rapidly improve the product to serve new user needs.”

Companies have been racing to deploy generative AI, with consumers becoming accustomed to using the new features. A day of reckoning has always been on the horizon, however, with generative AI too expensive of a proposition to remain free forever.

Google is in an especially difficult position. The company clearly wants to leverage the power of AI—something it can’t do for free indefinitely. At the same time, however, Google’s standard search is industry-leading for a reason. If the company decides to start charging a premium for AI-powered search, there is a risk many customers will simply fall back to using the company’s standard search instead.