Google’s vision is a future where you can search any way, anywhere you want. As we enter 2024, Google is introducing two major updates that bring their vision closer to reality: Circle to Search and an AI-powered multisearch experience. 

Last month Circle to Search was unveiled. It’s a new way to search anything on your Android phone screen without switching apps. With a simple gesture, you can select images, text or videos by circling, highlighting, scribbling or tapping and find the information you need right where you are. It can be disruptive to stop what you’re doing and use another app or browser to start searching for information. But now, whether you’re texting friends, browsing social media or watching a video, you can search what’s on your screen right when your curiosity strikes. 

Since it launched in 2022, multisearch has been best for refining visual queries — like searching for a photo of red sneakers with Lens and adding the word “blue” to find them in your preferred color. But now, thanks to Google’s recent breakthroughs in generative AI, multisearch makes exploring the world easier than ever before. When you point your camera (or upload a photo or screenshot) and ask a question using the Google app, the new multisearch experience will show results with AI-powered insights that go beyond just visual matches. 

Google’s goal is to make AI helpful for everyone, not just early adopters. So moving forward, as they continue to experiment and uncover which applications of gen AI are most helpful, they’ll introduce them into Search more broadly. These updates will make Search even more natural and intuitive, but we’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s possible.