Google Search Live Debuts in India as AI Mode Expands

Google is expanding its real-time, camera-first conversational search experience, Search Live, to India, with the feature arriving in both English and Hindi. The move makes India the second market in the world to receive the feature, indicative of how central Google has made India in its multimodal search strategy.

Along with the rollout, AI Mode is extending to seven more Indian languages: Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu — as part of a broader global language release. Google says the update is based on a custom Gemini model optimised for Search and informed by advancements made in Project Astra, its work on real-time multimodal understanding.

What Search Live does and how it works in practice

Search Live transforms your phone’s camera into an ask-anything machine. Aim it at a device that refuses to power up, a foreign street sign, or something mysterious in your kitchen pantry, and it will cogitate on the live scene as you ask follow-up questions. The back-and-forthness is contextual: what the camera sees informs the next answer not by taking up another search but through its relation to previously seen context.

The feature resides within AI Mode: tap the Live button below the search bar in Google’s app, or open Lens and select Live. Google says that the underlying model is tweaked to minimize latency and enable a deeper understanding based on visual cues — picture text on labels, orientation of ports, or subtle differences between similar objects — to keep the conversation smooth while the camera rolls.

The importance of multimodal search for India

India is already one of the world’s largest markets for voice and visual search, Google said. A telling proxy is the use of Lens: Google has previously said people make more than 12 billion visual searches a month on Lens, and India has always been near the top in terms of volume.

At issue in the bet is both scale and behavior. According to the IAMAI-Kantar report, there are hundreds of millions of internet users across India, and rural adoption is growing at the fastest pace. Cable.co.uk has, a number of times, placed the country at or near the top of its rankings for low-cost mobile data. That confluence — ubiquitous smartphones, cheap data, and a comfort with voice-first interaction — makes India a proving ground for camera-native, conversational search.

AI Mode now supports seven Indian languages

AI Mode’s Indian language addition spans Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu — adding to the already available Hindi. Google has said its custom Gemini model for Search improves reasoning across languages and dialects, a key factor in India where code-mixing and regional terms appear often in everyday queries.

Worldwide, the AI Mode update adds support for over 35 new languages and expands availability to approximately 40 more countries and regions. Overall, the AI-driven UI is now live in more than 200 countries and territories, making multimodal search accessible to a much larger user base.

Mind the Gemini name overlap across Google apps

Confusing, perhaps: Search Live operates via AI Mode in the Google app; meanwhile, the Gemini app will have a similarly named Gemini Live for voice-first chats. What Search Live has that differs from Gemini Live is an anchoring system to what your camera sees, and it’s built for search workflows, as opposed to the general conversational experience you get with Gemini. Expect Google to make this clearer in-app with labels and prompts as this rollout accelerates.

Early use cases for Search Live in the Indian context

India has no dearth of real-life examples. A commuter can, for example, point the camera at a local bus schedule and ask in Hindi for the fastest route. A student can snap a picture of a physics problem on the classroom board and ask for step-by-step hints in Marathi. A shopper can compare two vegetable varieties at a market and ask for recipes in Tamil, with follow-ups about spice substitutions.

And importantly, the ability to deal with mixed-language queries reflects how Indians search in the real world. Users frequently combine English keywords with local-language context, and the system’s multimodal grounding — using text, voice, and even live images — enables it to disambiguate intent without a rigid query form.

What this means for publishers, newsrooms, and SEO

Publishers have expressed concern about the potential impact of AI-focused features like AI Mode and AI Overviews on referral traffic. News Media Alliance and the Digital News Publishers Association of India are also pushing platforms for more transparency around how AI-generated summaries attribute and link to sources.

Google has said that it aims to do a good job of sending qualified traffic to publishers with its AI-led search experiences, and has cited ongoing tests with sourcing and link placement. For SEO teams, the move is a continuation of a larger trend: content that is structured, verified, and helpful in multiple languages and formats has the most potential to surface within conversational results.

Availability in India and how to try Search Live now

Search Live starts to roll out in India within the Google app, with more users and languages later this year. Find the Live entry point below the search bar or in Lens. AI Mode’s additional Indian languages will start showing up in phases, and once they become available, you can switch languages in settings or simply start asking questions in your desired language.