Google launches AI Mode in India as first international expansion [U]

Abner Li | Jul 7 2025 - 10:17 pm PT

Since the March announcement, AI Mode has only been available in the US, but Google is now bringing it to India.

Update 7/7: Two weeks after users in India could start testing via Labs, AI Mode is launching for everyone in English. You can expect to see it in the “coming days.” Google notes how the initial “response has been encouraging, with people appreciating its speed and the quality of the responses.”

We’ve seen users putting it to work in diverse ways—from diving deep into topics for learning to understanding complex how-tos.

Original 6/23: This is the first international expansion of the AI search experience. It follows the wide US launch at I/O 2025 last month.

AI Mode is currently powered by a custom version of Gemini 2.5. It leverages a query fan-out technique that “breaks your question into subtopics and issues a multitude of queries simultaneously on your behalf.” The response surfaces what links were used to answer the question. Besides the web, AI Mode leverages “fresh, real-time sources like the Knowledge Graph, info about the real world, and shopping data for billions of products.” After getting a response, you can ask follow-up questions.

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Compared to AI Overviews, Google says AI Mode offers “more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities.”

Besides being able to enter longer text prompts (with queries that are 2-3x the length of traditional searches), AI Mode supports voice input with a neat waveform, and adding images using Google Lens to your question. This multimodal experience is available in the Google app for Android and iOS.

To directly use AI Mode, you can tap a new shortcut in the Search bar (as seen in the cover image above), while it’s also available at google.com/aimode on the web.

“What’s this plant and give me instructions on how to repot and take care of it.” AI Mode will grasp the visual details, identify the plant, and provide a detailed, step-by-step response, complete with links to articles. You could also follow up with questions like, “Where should I place it in my home for best growth?”

When on the usual Search results page, “AI Mode” appears as a new filter to the left of “All,” “Images,” “News,” etc. There’s also a shortcut to launch AI Mode at the bottom of AI Overviews.

Starting today, users in India can sign-up for Google AI Mode in English via the Search Labs experiment.