Google Lens
Nano Banana has been a hit in the Gemini app, and Google is now bringing the model’s (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) viral image editing and generation to AI Mode, as well as Google Lens.
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Google today “officially launched” (US English) AI Mode’s Search Live capability, with both audio and video input, today.
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After adding Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google is updating AI Mode with four big features across Search Live (video with Google Lens access), Canvas, and more.
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Following the unveil at I/O 2025, Google is beginning to let AI Mode users share their camera in Search Live.
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Google has announced that Lens is coming to YouTube Shorts, starting with a beta that’s going live now.
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Search Live feels like the spiritual, if not technological, successor to Google Lens. In fact, I think it should replace Google Lens entirely.
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Last month, AI Mode gained Google Lens integration (as depicted above) to power multimodal search. Google is now working on “Live for AI Mode.”
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Honor’s latest mid-range smartphone is the Honor 400 Lite, and it has a new “AI Camera Button” that can launch Google Lens.
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AI Mode entered testing a month ago and Google is now expanding access to free Labs users, as well as adding Lens visual search.
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Google is more deeply integrating Lens visual search into Chrome for iOS with a new Screen Search capability that takes after Circle to Search on Android. Meanwhile, Google Lens can now recognize more unique images.
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In the second strange component change of the last few days, Google Lens is testing a wild Translate button that is rather different from the company’s existing design language.
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Now that we have Circle to Search, Google Lens has been updated so that it immediately starts the camera viewfinder upon launch on Android and iOS.
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With 20% of the 20 billion visuals searches every month focused on shopping, Google is updating Lens to use location for those queries.
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With the addition of song lookup last month, Circle to Search was visually tweaked, and has now lost its Google Lens shortcut.
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According to Google, “Lens queries are now one of the fastest growing query types on Search” with 20 billion visual searches every month. Google Lens is now rolling out the voice and video search capabilities announced at I/O 2024.
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Following Android (and even iOS with a shortcut), Circle to Search — officially “Drag to search” — is coming to desktop Chrome/Chromebooks with a very prominent Google Lens icon.
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As part of several safety updates today, Google is updating Circle to Search and Lens with “About this image.” The company is also working to combat explicit fake imagery.
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Back in March, Google Lens introduced the highly-requested ability to save your Visual Search History, and it has now gotten a big UI update.
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In a rather interesting move, the search bar in YouTube for Android has gained a new Google Lens integration.
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Circle to Search on Android is a very useful feature because of its simplicity and, from the looks of it, it’s also coming to Google Chrome on desktop platforms.
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Earlier this year, Google launched a Circle to Search feature for Android that takes a screenshot and lets you select what to look up. Thanks to Google Lens and iOS Shortcuts, the underlying Circle to Search capability can now be replicated on any iPhone.
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My technological “how often do you think about the Roman Empire” is the double twist shortcut introduced with the Moto X that would launch the camera from anywhere, including when the screen is off.
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Google Lens is rolling out the highly-requested ability to save your Visual Search History so that you can return to any analyzed image in the future.
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The Google app on Android is starting to roll out a new design for context-aware buttons that extends out of the search bar.
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