- A new Android search experience is in testing
- Results are updated in real time from voice inputs
- There's no indication when the feature may launch
With the rise of generative AI bots, it feels like Google's dominance in web search is under serious threat for the first time in a long time, but Google itself is busy testing new features to help users find information faster.
As spotted by well-known tipster @AssembleDebug (via Android Central), Google is experimenting with a real-time conversational search experience on mobile. You simply chat to Google, and the results change automatically with each input, as you ask follow-up questions or submit new ones.
It's not immediately clear where this demo was found, but given the good track record of this particular leaker, it may well have been discovered hidden in early testing code for Android or the Google app on Android.
You can already search Google using your voice on mobile – just tap the microphone icon rather than typing anything in – but the continuous listening and instant refreshes are new, and make the experience smoother and more natural.
Search is changing
The demo of new conversational search in Google app. It continuosly listens to your voice where you can ask followup questions while performing a search.#Android #Google pic.twitter.com/DgXnMx5DU4November 4, 2024
We're seeing a lot of innovation around web search and information gathering at the moment, from Google and many others. Barely a day goes by without some kind of new tool arriving, most often powered by AI.
The idea of voice as an input method is having something of a renaissance as well. Of course, we've been chatting to our smart speakers and smartphones for years at this point, but generative AI has made the conversations more fluid and more useful.
All of the big names in tech are working towards ways of combining multiple inputs together (known as a multimodal approach), so that voice, video, images, and text can all be combined and used for queries.
This is another move towards that. There's no official word from Google on this yet, and we don't know when (or if) the functionality will appear, but there's no doubt the company's products are going to continue to evolve at a rapid pace.
