Google just made its voice-and-camera AI search assistant available to most of the world. Search Live, the feature that lets you point your phone at something and ask questions out loud, now works in more than 200 countries and territories, The Verge AI reports.
The expansion also brings support for dozens of new languages, powered by Google’s new Gemini 3.1 Flash Live audio-focused AI model. Google describes the model as “inherently multilingual,” which explains how they’re scaling so fast across language barriers.
📍 What Search Live actually does
You open the Google app, tap “Live” beneath the search bar, and start talking. Point your camera at a broken faucet, a plant you can’t identify, or assembly instructions you don’t understand. The AI responds with audio and pulls up relevant web links.
It first rolled out broadly in the US last September. Now it’s everywhere.
⚡ What’s new beyond the geographic expansion
- Faster responses: Google says the new Gemini 3.1 Flash Live model improves response speed
- Better conversations: The company promises “more natural and intuitive conversations”
- Google Lens integration: Search Live is also accessible through Lens
- Translate on iOS: Google’s real-time translation feature, which captures speech and plays translations through your headphones, is coming to iPhones
- Translation expanding too: New regions include Germany, Spain, France, Nigeria, Italy, the UK, Japan, Bangladesh, and Thailand
🔍 Why this matters
This is Google defending its core territory. Search is still the company’s cash machine, and the threat from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI-first search tools is real. By combining voice, camera, and multilingual AI into the search experience, Google is making a clear argument: you don’t need a separate AI app when Search already does this natively.
The multilingual angle is particularly significant. Most AI assistants still work best in English. Google building a model that’s “inherently multilingual” rather than bolting on translation as an afterthought gives it a structural advantage in non-English markets, where competitors are weakest.
The real-time Translate expansion to iOS is worth watching too. Pairing live speech translation with headphones turns your phone into something close to a universal translator. It’s a practical, everyday use case that could drive serious adoption.
For more details, check out the full coverage at The Verge AI.