If you’re in the US, you might see a new shaded section at the top of your Google Search results with a summary answering your inquiry, along with links for more information. That section, generated by Google’s generative AI technology, used to appear only if you’ve opted into the Search Generative Experience(SGE) in the Search Labs platform. Now, according to Search Engine Land, Google has started adding the experience on a “subset of queries, on a small percentage of search traffic in the US.” And that is why you could be getting Google’s experimental AI-generated section even if you haven’t switched it on.
Kagi has been doing a decent job for me, with the downside that it’s paid, and does use results from other places.
They go into detail about how they work, but it’s them paying for results from lots of engines, plus their own engine, then heavy duty filtering of the results.
Plus a ML results summarizer you can press after searching.