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Google just gave its artificial intelligence (AI) search a powerful upgrade that lets users ask questions about photos. The new feature combines Google Lens with Gemini AI to understand what’s in images and answer questions about them.
Users can upload photos or take new ones, ask questions about objects in the image, and get responses with helpful links. The system understands how objects relate to each other and can identify materials, colors, and arrangements within photos.
“With Gemini’s multimodal capabilities, AI Mode can understand the entire scene in an image, including the context of how objects relate to one another and their unique materials, colors, shapes, and arrangements,” Google explained in a blog post.
Google shows off the technology with a bookshelf example. When someone takes a picture of books and asks for recommendations, the system identifies each title, suggests similar highly-rated books, and provides links to learn more or buy them. Users can ask follow-up questions, such as which recommendation is the shortest book.
Behind the scenes, Google uses what it calls a “query fan-out technique.” Google Lens first precisely identifies each object in the image. The system then generates multiple related searches about both the entire image and specific objects within it, resulting in a much more detailed response than traditional Google search provides.
At first, this feature was exclusive to Google One AI Premium subscribers paying $20 monthly. Now, Google is expanding access to “millions more Labs users in the U.S.” who aren’t paying for premium features.
This wider release comes after positive feedback about the tool’s design, speed, and ability to handle complex questions. Google reports that when people use AI Mode, they type queries twice as long as regular Google searches. Users primarily turn to the feature for exploratory questions and complicated tasks like comparing products, searching for how-to guides, and planning trips.
The update is available in the Google app on both Android and iOS devices. Users can access it by signing up through Google Labs, where Google tests experimental features.
This update aligns Google’s AI search tools on the same level as Perplexity AI and ChatGPT Search, which have become popular for their conversation-like approach. As AI search tools evolve, they’re transforming how information is found online – moving away from typing keywords toward having natural conversations about visual content.
