Bringing AI to every Indian across our products

Google's mission has always been to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. In India, a land of incredible diversity, this mission takes on a special meaning. We believe everyone, regardless of their language, location, or background, deserves access to information and opportunities. This is the heart of "AI for Every Indian" – our commitment to building an inclusive India where AI empowers every citizen to learn, grow, and thrive.

This is the driving force behind our work at Google in India. Let's take a closer look at how we're doing it.

1. Breaking Down Information Barriers

AI has been transforming our products for years, helping us break down many information barriers. In fact, more people in India use innovations such as Google Lens, voice search, and Lens in Maps than any other country every month. We're excited about our next step in this journey with Gemini, our most capable AI model yet. Built to be natively multimodal, Gemini can understand and combine different types of information, including text, audio, image, and video — all at the same time. This helps it better understand nuanced information across languages and extract insights from massive amounts of data in seconds.

Today, we’re bringing some of our latest innovations using Gemini models to India, taking another step towards our goal of empowering every Indian with the best of technology.

Speak to Gemini in 9 Indian languages with Gemini Live

The Gemini mobile app, your AI assistant from Google, is helping users in India tackle a wide range of tasks - from academic help and creative inspiration to understanding complex information. And, we want everyone to benefit from this and get things done in their preferred language.

In India, with over 40% of Gemini's Indian language users already relying on voice interactions, we recently launched Gemini Live in English for even more natural and free-flowing voice conversations with Gemini on your phone. Gemini Live responds in real-time, adapts to your conversation style, and allows you to interrupt, ask follow-up questions, or come back later - perfect for learning new concepts or brainstorming.

We’re thrilled to announce that starting today, we’re rolling out Gemini Live in Hindi, with 8 more Indian languages — Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu — to follow in the coming weeks!

New ways to search with AI Overviews in Indian languages and search with video

With a Gemini model customized for Google Search, we've been dramatically expanding what's possible to help you ask entirely new kinds of questions. A powerful example of this is AI Overviews. Launched earlier this year, AI Overviews help you quickly find what you need, with links to referenced web pages to go deeper. We’ve been building it thoughtfully to help you access information and perspectives from a diverse range of sources.

We’ve found that people prefer using Search with AI Overviews, and they find their search results more helpful. And in our testing, we’ve seen that Indian users listen to AI Overviews responses more often than other countries. Currently available in English and Hindi, in the coming weeks, you'll also get helpful AI Overviews in Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, and Marathi.

Google Lens is also revolutionizing how you can search what you see with a brand new way to query: video. Soon, you will be able to use Lens to search with a video and ask more complex questions about things in motion. Imagine you’re cooking, and the pressure cooker whistle isn’t working properly. Open Lens in the Google app, hold on the shutter button to record a video of it while asking out loud, "How do I fix this?" Our custom Gemini model will make sense of the video and provide a helpful AI Overview with links to learn more. This capability will soon be available for Search Labs users enrolled in the “AI Overviews and more” experiment, with support for mobile English queries.

More Insightful, Visual, and Safer journeys with AI powered Google Maps

AI continues to transform how you navigate and explore the world with Google Maps!

We’re using AI to enhance how users explore and evaluate places of interest. Imagine you're trying to find the perfect restaurant for a special occasion. You may open Google Maps to check out helpful reviews about a new dining spot, but you may not have the time to read all of them. Starting to roll out later this month in India, Maps will show you helpful summaries about the restaurant thanks to our Gemini model analyzing Maps’ billions of reviews - so you can understand at a glance what people are saying about it, and quickly decide if that restaurant is right for you.

Google Maps now allows users to search for not just places, but also specific items and experiences. Whether seeking themed birthday cakes or unique picnic spots, AI-powered image recognition analyzes billions of images shared by the Google Maps community to deliver relevant, photo-first results and a map for visual exploration.

Our community of contributors in India already help us surface real-time alerts on your route. Now, we're adding two new weather-related alerts in India for low visibility areas due to fog and flooded roads. So if you find yourself driving into a foggy area - or if a downpour has impacted your upcoming route, you can both see and report these alerts to keep your community informed.

2. Empowering Small, Mid-sized Businesses with AI

We're committed to helping Indian businesses of all sizes thrive in the digital world. With over 35 million Indian businesses online across products like Search and Maps, we’re facilitating over 900 million connections per month. But being online isn't enough. We’re introducing new AI-powered tools to help businesses stand out, provide valuable information, and engage customers deeply.

New AI tools in Product Studio in Google Merchant Center will help businesses showcase products more creatively to shoppers. Image-to-Video Animation transforms photos into eye-catching videos. Businesses can even create visuals that match their unique brand style by uploading an image that represents their aesthetic.

We already help businesses of all types generate captivating business descriptions to attract customers, and now we're introducing a new way to help restaurants convert menu photos into formatted online menus. By linking their social accounts through their Google Business Profile, they can also showcase deals from their social media posts, alongside deals from popular aggregators like Zomato, Swiggy, EazyDiner, and MagicPin. We’re looking forward to expanding to other verticals in the future.

We're also making it even easier for Indian merchants to connect directly to customers. Through the Google Merchant Center, businesses can now offer chat options via SMS or WhatsApp right from their Search listings, making it easier to connect with customers. India is one of the first markets where we'll roll this out with a select set of merchants, and we'll work to expand to all businesses in the coming months.

3. Expanding Financial Inclusion

Google Pay is making credit more accessible in India with new offerings tailored to diverse user needs.

To aid understanding of credit products, Google Pay’s AI-powered support guide can now answer users’ questions about repayment cycles, eligibility criteria, EMIs and much more, while providing a link to the relevant, detailed terms and conditions.

Expanding access to credit is a key priority, so we’re building on last year’s launches of consumer and business loan products. We’re adding Aditya Birla Finance Limited to the portfolio of credit providers on Google Pay, giving users a wider range of credit products to choose from, to meet their individual needs.

Further, we’re partnering with Muthoot Finance to bring the convenience of gold-backed loans to Google Pay, unlocking a valuable credit option for millions, particularly in rural India. This collaboration opens up an avenue to mobilize their latent gold assets, at affordable interest rates and with greater flexibility to chart a course for their futures through education, business or anything else.

4. Supporting digital health infrastructure

We aim to help everyone, everywhere live longer, healthier lives, bringing our tools and technologies to help build health solutions that help address a variety of needs at scale.

As part of this commitment, we're proud to be supporting the Government of India’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) that is being implemented by the National Health Authority. Google’s health research team has supported National Health Authority with thought leadership that has helped build tools that assist more seamless integrations with the ABDM digital architecture, with the time taken for app integrations potentially reducing from up to 6 months to less than 2 weeks.

Further, starting next year, ABHA health ID cards, which enables people to store, share and receive digital health information seamlessly with healthcare groups across the country, will be accessible on Google Wallet in partnership with Eka Care. To ensure privacy, ABHA ID holders will need to authenticate their devices with a fingerprint, PIN, or passcode to add or access their ABHA ID in Google Wallet. This will empower over 600 million users to conveniently and securely manage their health information, like lab reports and prescriptions, and better utilize India's public health infrastructure for their well-being.