That's the real question and it's not hypothetical. Google already adjusts organic rankings based on advertiser relationships in ways that aren't documented. With AI Mode the surface area for that kind of influence is much larger and much less visible. A search result you can inspect. A synthesized answer you can't.

Don't they already to this with maps routing? I thought this was the norm.

Do you mean something like rerouting you to make sure you pass a mcdonald’s at lunch time? Or are you talking about mcdonald’s always showing up when you search for food along your route? Rerouting would surprise me, but really it wouldn’t surprise me that much at this point.

Rerouting. Not that it completely takes over the route ofc, but that (potential) ad revenue is a metric just like traffic, speed limits et.c. that gets considered in the decision making.