When something piques your interest (like these cute dog goggles), it can be disruptive to interrupt your current activity and switch to another app or browser to start searching for information. But now, whether you’re texting friends, browsing social media, or watching a video, you can search what’s on your screen right when your curiosity strikes. Additionally, Search and Shopping ads will continue to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the results page, as we’ve previously announced.
Circle to Search is launching globally on select premium Android smartphones on January 31, starting with the Pixel 8, the Pixel 8 Pro, and the new Samsung Galaxy S24 series.
Use Your Camera to Ask Questions and Get Assistance from AI
In 2022, we introduced multisearch in Lens as a new way to conduct multimodal searches, using both images and text. Since its release, multisearch has been especially helpful for refining visual queries, such as searching for a photo of red sneakers with Lens and adding the word “blue” to find them in your preferred color. Now, thanks to our recent advancements in generative AI, multisearch makes exploring the world easier than ever before.
Starting today, when you point your camera (or upload a photo or screenshot) and ask a question using the Google app, the new multisearch experience will present results with AI-powered insights that go beyond just visual matches. This allows you to ask more complex or nuanced questions about what you see and quickly find and comprehend key information.
For instance, imagine you’re at a yard sale and you come across an unfamiliar board game. There are no instructions or a box, so a few questions immediately come to mind: What is this game and how is it played? This is where the new multisearch experience can be beneficial.
Simply take a picture of the game, add your question (“How do you play this?”), and you’ll receive an AI-powered overview that consolidates the most relevant information from across the web. This way, you can quickly discover the game’s name and how to win. Additionally, the AI-powered overview makes it easy to delve deeper with supporting links and access all the details you need.
