Google will begin automatically upgrading qualifying Search campaigns to A.I. Max on Monday, Sept. 1, according to a notice on the Google Ads and Commerce Blog and emails sent to affected advertisers this month. The rollout continues through Sept. 30. There’s no opt-out once migration begins; advertisers who want to preserve their current setup must disable the underlying features before Monday.

A.I. Max consolidates what Brandon Ervin, director of product management for Google Ads, describes as “search term matching, text customization and final URL expansion.” In practice, that means Google’s system will match queries beyond the advertiser’s keyword list, generate ad copy from landing-page content, and reroute clicks to whichever URL its model prefers. Ervin cites aggregate data showing “an average of 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA/ROAS” when the full suite is enabled.

The defaults depend on where a campaign starts. Automatically Created Assets campaigns migrate into search term matching plus text customization. Campaign-level Broad Match setups get search term matching only. Brand inclusions and exclusions carry over, per a Google Ads Developer Blog post dated Aug. 12 summarized by TechWyse.

Google already closed the exits. Search Engine Land reported that on Aug. 3, the company stopped allowing creation of new campaign-level Broad Match and legacy Automatically Created Assets configurations across its interface, Ads Editor, and API. Dynamic Search Ads were decoupled from this wave in June and are scheduled to auto-upgrade in February 2027.

The click-fraud vendor ClickGuardian, writing in July, warned that A.I. Max widens the “surface area” a budget is exposed to, and that its expansion decisions draw on the same signals as Smart Bidding. Polluted conversion data, in other words, doesn’t just distort bids anymore. It distorts what gets shown, to whom, and where they land. Google’s updated Terms of Service, in force since July 1, authorize the company to “format, select, or generate targets, ads, or destinations” on the advertiser’s behalf, while placing the burden of reviewing that output on the advertiser.

For small businesses, the migration continues a 2026 pattern in which platform defaults quietly replace budget with algorithms, joining Google’s decision to bill small businesses for missed calls beginning Oct. 1. The consent model is inverted: the system acts, and the advertiser is asked to check its work after the fact.

Sources