Google expands Search Live, its voice AI search, to 200+ countries and dozens of languages

Google has expanded Search Live — a voice-based AI assistant with camera search — to more than 200 countries and territories. The feature now supports dozens of languages, making it one of the largest AI search deployments in the company's history. Search Live first became available to US users in September of last year.

The principle of operation is straightforward: you point your smartphone camera at any object, ask a question out loud — for example, how to assemble a shelf — and receive an audio response along with links to relevant web pages. This is not a traditional text-based search, but rather a live dialogue with a system that simultaneously "sees" and "hears". The global launch became possible thanks to new Gemini models.

Google does not specify which exact versions are used in Search Live, but the company announced Gemini 3.1 Flash Live — a model optimized for real-time operation with voice and video support. This model, seemingly, ensures speed and quality of responses at global scale.

Search Live falls into the category of multimodal search — a field in which Google actively competes with OpenAI (ChatGPT with voice and camera support) and Apple (the updated Siri with visual context). The focus on voice and camera reflects a key trend: search is increasingly less about text input and increasingly more about natural interaction with the surrounding world. For users outside the US, the opening of access means the opportunity to get next-generation AI search in their native language.

How comparable the answer quality will be to the English-language version — practice will tell: multilingual AI systems traditionally perform unevenly depending on the language and region.