Google is significantly strengthening its presence in India, one of its fastest-growing markets, by rolling out its advanced AI-powered conversational search feature, Search Live, and expanding its AI Mode to include seven new Indian languages. India is now the second market globally, after the United States, to receive Search Live, underscoring the country's strategic importance for Google's AI initiatives.

Search Live, which first debuted in the U.S. in July, leverages Google’s cutting-edge Project Astra technology and is integrated within the company’s AI Mode. This innovative feature empowers users to point their phone camera at objects and receive real-time assistance through interactive, back-and-forth conversations. These conversations are enriched by drawing on the visual context provided directly from the camera feed, offering a truly multimodal search experience. Powered by a custom version of Gemini, Search Live is designed to evolve, with Google planning to utilize India's extensive base of early AI adopters to train its systems on a broader spectrum of visual contexts, enhancing its capabilities over time. Hema Budaraja, vice president of product management for Search at Google, highlighted India's role, stating, “People in India are power users of multimodal search, forming our largest user base for both voice and visual search globally.”

The rollout of Search Live in India, initially available in English and Hindi, commenced recently and is expected to reach a wider audience in the coming weeks. Users can access this feature by tapping the “Live” icon located under the search bar in the Google app, or by opening Google Lens and selecting “Live” from the bottom of the screen. It is worth noting that Google’s separate Gemini app also features a similarly named function, Gemini Live, introduced in May, which offers a comparable experience. This potential overlap could lead to some user confusion.

In parallel with the Search Live launch, Google has also significantly expanded its AI Mode to encompass seven additional Indian languages: Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. This localized expansion is part of a broader global initiative to make AI Mode available in over 35 new languages and across more than 40 new countries and territories, ultimately extending this AI-powered search experience to over 200 countries and territories worldwide. AI Mode, which first launched in the U.S. in March and expanded to more users there in May, allows users to ask complex, multi-part questions through an intuitive AI-powered interface. It was introduced in India in June and subsequently rolled out globally in August, with five new languages, including Hindi, Indonesian, and Japanese, added just last month.

Budaraju emphasized the sophisticated linguistic capabilities, explaining, “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.”

Despite these advancements, Google’s AI Mode and other AI features, such as AI Overviews, have drawn criticism for potentially reducing search traffic to online publishers. Google, however, has consistently denied that its AI-driven search tools are adversely impacting website visits, maintaining its stance on the benefits of these innovative search solutions.