Google brings AI mode to Hindi as it races to dominate search beyond English; key points here

After six months of experimenting with the English AI mode, Google has announced the expansion of this AI-powered search experience to five additional languages, including Hindi.

In a blogpost announcement on early Tuesday, the other languages in which the AI mode will now be accessible to users include Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese.

The AI mode was initially launched in the U.S. in March and eventually expanded to the U.K. market, with subsequent full-fledged roll out to 180 new markets. AI Mode was launched in India only in July, and just two months later, Google has already announced its rollout in Hindi.

What is Google’s AI Mode?

The AI Mode supplements a user’s regular Google search experience. The feature uses a customised version of Gemini 2.5 with advanced multimodal and reasoning capabilities. This allows users to get contextually rich and personally relevant answers to their longer, more complex, and nuanced questions. The functionality particularly works in finding responses for exploratory, local recommendations and itinerary planning queries, or understanding complicated how-to questions. Much like Google’s AI assistant Gemini, users can interact with AI Mode through text, voice, or images.

The mode was initially accessible to only One AI Premium subscribers. In a bid to catch up with competitors such as Aravind Srinivas-led Perplexity and Sam Altman-led OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google rolled out the mode for all users.

In later weeks of August, the tech giant started rolling out more agentic capabilities and personalised responses with the AI Mode in Search, allowing users to make reservations and local service appointments. However, the feature is still available exclusively to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S., under the ‘Agentic capabilities in AI Mode’ experiment in Google Labs.

The Google AI Ultra subscription costs $249.99 per month in the U.S., while in India the price for the first three months is ₹12,200 monthly, following which the cost goes up to ₹24,500 per month (~$278.)  The subscription comes with the latest Gemini models including its app with higher limits, and 30 TB of cloud storage.

How to use the AI Mode in Hindi?

The AI Mode currently is accessible through the search results page, under a dedicated tab and a button in the search bar. The company has indicated in the past that this may become the default search experience, however, due to the publisher controversy, it may be slightly more difficult for Google to give up its three-blue-links format of presenting search results.

Once the user has entered the mode, they can type queries in Devanagari script from their keyboard or show images or use voice to ask questions in Hindi. This includes asking questions on nutrition, gardening, or personal care.

Google illustrated this with an example where a user had uploaded a photo of their balcony and asked which plant would thrive during the monsoon. The functionality, hence, understands the setting and personal preferences required to personalise query responses, which can be refined further through follow-up questions.

Why is it significant to have an AI mode in Hindi right now?

Google states this roll out is a part of its broader efforts for building a global search engine.

“Building a truly global Search goes far beyond translation. It requires a nuanced understanding of local information. With this expansion, more people can now use AI Mode to ask complex questions in their preferred language, while exploring the web more deeply,” said Hema Budaraju, Vice President, Product Management, Search, Google, in a blogpost.

While this will enhance user engagement and give them search convenience, the functionality will also enable Google to receive much more linguistically diverse data required to improve its Gemini models hence, helping it outpace its competitors in the AI race.

In Alphabet’s latest Q2 earnings call, company CEO Sundar Pichai had shared some stats showing the success of Google’s AI incorporation efforts into its core businesses including Search. Pichai had shared that the AI Mode, in July, then launched only in U.S. and India had crossed the 100-million-monthly-active-user-mark.

Meanwhile, Pichai also shared that Google’s AI Overviews had then, surpassed 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries in 40 languages, indicating massive headroom for growth in non-English languages.

As Google expands its AI mode’s linguistic capabilities, these efforts signal Google’s enormous efforts in keeping its Search experience relevant in the AI world. A more practical next step could be integrating AI Mode directly into Google Chrome, Search, or the broader Gemini experience. Keeping it as a separate mode feels somewhat cluttered, reflecting Google’s own struggle to move beyond its traditional three-blue-links search model.