Google for India 2024: From AI overviews to UPI Circle, here are the biggest annoucements

Google on Thursday, hosted the Google for India 2024 event. The Alphabet-owned company made several India-centric announcements at the event, including updates to Gemini Live, Google Maps, AI Overviews, and more. In case you missed it, we’ve put together this list of the five biggest annoucements at the event. Read on.

1. AI Overviews now supports more local languages

Starting with Google’s AI Overviews, the feature was already live in Hindi in India. However, it will now support three more languages including Marathi, Bengali, and Telugu. This will ensure that a larger section of the Indian population will be able to access AI-generated summaries of what they search for, saving them both time and effort.

2. Gemini Live rolling out in Hindi

Speaking of vernacular languages, Gemini Live will also now support Hindi, making the The AI chatbot more usable for Indian audiences. With the addition of the Hindi language, Gemini Live now supports a total of nine Indian languages. Besides Hindi, these include Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

Google also announced that it is experimenting with a Gemini-powered video search feature in India. This feature will be available in the Google Lens app, allowing users to do video searches and ask queries related to the subject in focus quickly.

3. Google Pay updates

Google announced that its UPI Circle feature is also coming to India. Google has collaborated with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to bring this feature to the company.

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For the unaware, UPI Circle allows for a primary bank account holder to add their family members to their circle on Google Pay, allowing them to make payments from the same bank account.

4. Google Maps weather updates, AI summaries

The next update is for Google Maps. Maps will now be able to provide users with real-time weather updates. Users will also be able to report and receive alerts for fog and flooding on roads. Furthermore, Google Maps is also getting the much-awaited AI summaries feature, which will show a summary of all user reviews of any given location, at the top.

5. Play Protect to block installation from unknown sources

Google also announced an update to Google Play Protect. The company is piloting Enhanced Fraud Protection within Google Play Protect, which will analyse and block installations from unknown sources, including messaging apps.

And that’s it! These were the biggest annoucements made at the Google for India event 2024. Stay tuned to Unboxed by Croma for more such updates, as well as tips, tricks and trivia on all things tech!