Google Brings Generative AI to Search in India

Google has announced the launch of new generative AI-powered search experiences in India and Japan, which will display text and visual prompts along with summaries. The feature, which debuted in the US first, was rolled out to users in India and Japan earlier this week, though they have to manually opt in. These announcements were made at the Google Next cloud computing conference.

For users in Japan, the feature will also work in local languages. In India, this new search experience only works in English and Hindi currently, so further localisation is missing.

The generative search experience differs from the Bard chatbot, as it is meant for finding information rather than human-like conversations. Bard can even generate software code. This is Google's response to Microsoft Bing, which has integrated the generative AI capabilities of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

This news follows Google's announcement that its AI-powered tools are now available for enterprise and business customers in India for ₹2,500 per user per month. This competes with Microsoft's AI-powered Office suite CoPilot, which uses ChatGPT technology.

Google executives raised a code red last year when ChatGPT emerged in November. With Microsoft integrating it into Bing, the search engine posed its first real challenge to Google's dominance in over a decade.

Google invested $300 million in Anthropic, creators of the LLM chatbot Claude started by former OpenAI employees.

Google's services include Duet-AI in Workspace, which helps users write documents, collate information, generate visuals and even draft emails using AI.