Google is bringing its AI-powered conversational search feature, Search Live, to India — launching in English and Hindi — and expanding AI Mode to seven new Indian languages, as the company strengthens its presence in one of its fastest-growing markets.
First introduced in the U.S. in July, Search Live builds on Google’s Project Astra technology and is available through the company’s AI Mode. The feature lets users point their phone camera at objects to get real-time assistance, supporting back-and-forth conversations that draw on the visual context from the camera feed.
With this launch, India becomes the second market after the U.S. to get Search Live — a logical move given the country’s vast base of early AI adopters, who have helped Google grow products like Gemini’s Nano Banana model. Google plans to leverage India’s early adoption to train its systems on a wider range of visual contexts, making Search Live more capable over time.
“People in India are power users of multimodal search, forming our largest user base for both voice and visual search globally,” said Hema Budaraja, vice president of product management for Search at Google, in a new blog post.
Search Live is starting to roll out to users in India today and will reach more people over the coming weeks. Once available, users can access it by tapping the “Live” icon under the search bar in the Google app, or by opening Lens and selecting “Live” from the bottom of the screen.
Earlier this year, Google revealed that Search Live is powered by a custom version of Gemini. The Gemini app separately includes a similarly named feature called Gemini Live, which was introduced in May and offers a comparable experience. This overlap could easily confuse some users.
Google has also expanded its AI Mode to seven Indian languages: Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. This is part of a global AI Mode expansion, which will be available in more than 35 new languages and 40 new countries and territories, making the AI-powered search experience accessible in over 200 countries and territories worldwide.
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Google’s AI Mode, which debuted in the U.S. in March and rolled out to more U.S. users in May, lets users ask complex, multi-part questions through an AI-powered interface. It launched in India in June and expanded globally in August. Last month, Google added five new languages — including Hindi, Indonesian, and Japanese — to the feature.
“The advanced reasoning and multimodal understanding of our custom Gemini model for Search allows AI Mode to truly grasp the subtleties of local languages, ensuring AI Mode is genuinely helpful and relevant in all the new languages we introduce,” Budaraju said in his post.
Google’s AI Mode and other AI features, including AI Overviews, have faced criticism for reducing search traffic to online publishers. The company, however, has denied that its AI-driven search tools are hurting website visits.
Jagmeet covers startups, tech policy-related updates, and all other major tech-centric developments from India for TechCrunch. He previously worked as a principal correspondent at NDTV.
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