Google brings Search Labs and generative AI experiences to India

 In December last year, Google demonstrated AI being used to make the Search experience more natural and intuitive with India-first and India-focused innovations that focus on bilingual users’ needs, new ways to search using a phone camera, and a new speech recognition model for Hinglish users. Building further on these Search innovations, starting today, Google is rolling out the Search Generative Experience (SGE) in India as an opt-in experiment in Search Labs. This AI-powered experience is available in English and Hindi.

With new breakthroughs in generative AI, Google is again reimagining what a search engine can do and is bringing these powerful new capabilities to Search in a bold and responsible way. This powerful new technology can unlock entirely new types of questions one never thought Search could answer and transform the way information is organized to help people sort through and make sense of what’s out there.

Puneesh Kumar, General Manager - Google Search, India, said, “With new generative AI capabilities in Search, we’re now taking more of the work out of searching. We’re envisioning a supercharged Search that does the heavy lifting for you so you’ll be able to understand a topic faster, uncover new viewpoints and insights, and get things done more easily. The Search Generative Experience is the first step we’re taking in this journey, and part of our vision to make Search radically more helpful. We’re excited to bring this to India and look forward to receiving feedback and iterating on the experience alongside our users over the next few months.” 

Improving Search with generative AI 

With new generative AI capabilities in Search, people will see an AI-powered overview of key information to consider, with links to dig deeper. Especially for new internet users, who may often get overwhelmed with the amount of information online, finding an answer more quickly can help ease their journey of discovery. 

For instance, a question like “Which is a good beginner trek in Himachal and how to prepare for it?” Normally, one might break this one question down into smaller ones, sort through the vast information available, and start to piece things together themself. With generative AI, Search can do some of that heavy lifting. 

Below this overview, they’ll see suggested next steps where they can simply tap a query like “How to take great photos on a trek?”, or type in a specific follow-up question. This conversational mode enables people to intuitively learn more about the topic they’re exploring. Context will be carried over from question to question, to help people more naturally continue their exploration.

India-focused features in the Search Generative Experience 

Google has also introduced features that are unique to SGE in India. A person can switch from an English result to Hindi by tapping the language toggle button, listen to the response with Text-To-Speech by tapping the ‘Listen’ button, and — rolling out soon — people will be able to tap the microphone icon in conversational mode to ask follow-up questions instead of typing them. Google has built these India-focused features in the Search Generative Experience to make it more intuitive and easier for people to access the information they need while searching.

Featuring a wide range of voices and sources

Hearing insights from others is always useful when making decisions, so Google has designed these new experiences to highlight and drive attention to content on the web, making it easy for people to dive deeper on the topic they’re learning about. As generative AI makes its way into Search, Google is committed to continue sending valuable traffic to sites across the web.

Ads are a vital piece of how the web works, and help people find relevant products and services. In this new generative experience, Search ads will continue to appear in dedicated ad slots throughout the page. Google will continue to uphold its commitment to ads transparency and making sure ads are distinguishable from organic search results.  When Search ads do appear, they will continue to feature their industry-leading clear and transparent ad labels with the “Sponsored” label in bold black text.  

Get help with your coding queries

Generative AI can be a helpful tool for both new or experienced programmers to get acquainted with the nuances of coding. Now use Search to understand and debug generated code more easily.

SGE currently provides AI-generated overviews to help with tasks across a number of programming languages and tools. For example, programmers can find answers to how-to questions, and see suggested code snippets for common tasks. Segments of code in overviews are even color-coded with syntax highlighting, so it’s faster and easier to identify elements like keywords, comments and strings, making it easier to digest code at a glance.

Taking a responsible approach 

Google is taking a responsible and deliberate approach to bringing new generative AI capabilities to Search. They have trained these models to uphold Search’s high bar for quality, which will continue to improve over time. Their hallmark systems have been fine-tuned for decades, and have additional guardrails, like limiting the types of queries where these capabilities will appear. 

To evaluate the information, people can also expand their view to see how the response is corroborated and click to go deeper. 

Sign up in Search Labs and experiment today

Google is bringing SGE as an experiment in Search Labs, available on Chrome desktop and the latest version of the Google App on Android and iOS. Access begins today – people can opt in to try it out and share feedback directly with the teams working on it. Simply tap the Labs icon in the Google app or Chrome desktop and visit labs.google.com/search to learn more. 

The SGE experiment will be available to opted-in users on Chrome desktop today, and is rolling out to the Google App on Android and iOS from today over the coming week.