Google is rolling out Search Live globally, marking one of the company's most ambitious attempts yet to blend visual AI with conversational search. The feature lets users point their phone camera at practically anything - a broken appliance, an unfamiliar plant, a math problem - and have a back-and-forth conversation about what they're seeing. It's the kind of sci-fi interface that's been promised for years, and now it's landing in millions of pockets worldwide.
Google is making its biggest bet yet on visual AI becoming the next frontier of search. The company announced today that Search Live, its camera-based conversational assistant, is rolling out to users worldwide after months of limited testing. The move signals Google's urgency to defend its search dominance as AI reshapes how people find information.
Search Live works by keeping your camera feed active while an AI assistant analyzes what you're looking at in real time. Point your phone at a leaky faucet, and you can ask how to fix it. Aim at a restaurant menu in another language, and you can discuss dietary restrictions. The system maintains context across multiple questions, letting you drill down without starting over each time. It's the kind of fluid, visual interaction that companies have been racing to perfect since ChatGPT showed what conversational AI could do.
The feature builds on Google Lens, which the company launched back in 2017 for static image searches. But Search Live represents a fundamental leap - instead of analyzing snapshots, it processes continuous video while simultaneously handling natural language conversations. According to Google's announcement, the technology draws on the company's latest multimodal AI models that can understand both visual and textual information simultaneously.
The timing isn't accidental. Apple recently previewed Visual Intelligence for iPhone, while Meta has been pushing AI features into its Ray-Ban smart glasses. The tech giants are all converging on the same insight - that the future of search isn't typing into a box, but simply looking at the world and asking questions. Google's global rollout suggests the company believes it has a narrow window to establish Search Live as the default way people interact with visual AI.
