Google’s Search Live comes to India, AI Mode gets more languages (techcrunch.com)

Google has launched Search Live — its realtime, conversational, camera-driven search feature — in India (English and Hindi) and expanded AI Mode to seven additional Indian languages (Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu). Search Live, now the second market rollout after the U.S., uses Project Astra foundations and a custom Gemini model to support multimodal, back-and-forth interactions that draw on live camera feeds; Indian users can access it via the “Live” icon in the Google app or Lens. AI Mode’s broader global expansion will add 35+ languages and 40 new territories, bringing Google’s AI-powered search to over 200 countries and territories. This move is significant because India is one of Google’s largest bases of multimodal search users — a diverse, high-volume population that can improve visual-context training and edge cases for Gemini-powered features. Technical implications include stronger local-language multimodal understanding driven by Gemini’s advanced reasoning, faster iteration from real-world visual queries, and potential UX confusion between similarly named products (Search Live vs. Gemini Live). The rollout also revives policy debates: Google’s AI summaries and AI Mode have been criticized for reducing publisher traffic, a claim Google denies, while the company doubles down on localized language and visual capabilities to broaden real-world utility.