Google Makes AI Search More Local with Five New Languages

Google has expanded AI Mode, its artificial intelligence-powered search feature, to five new languages after keeping it limited to English for more than six months. The new update will allow users to access AI Mode in Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese.

The announcement was made on Monday, with the company stating that the expansion will allow more users worldwide to ask complex questions in their preferred languages while exploring the web in greater depth.

The rollout comes shortly after Google made AI Mode available in English across 180 new markets, following its earlier launches in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. According to Hema Budaraju, Vice President of Product Management at Google Search, the company is focused on making AI Mode accessible to a broader global audience.

AI Mode was first introduced in March as an experiment for Google One AI Premium subscribers. It uses a customized version of Gemini 2.5, which includes multimodal and reasoning capabilities to process information and provide advanced responses. In August, Google introduced agentic features in AI Mode, enabling it to secure restaurant reservations. The company plans to expand this function further with local service appointments and event ticket bookings, although these features are currently only available to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the United States. The Ultra subscription is priced at $249.99 per month and is accessible through the “Agentic capabilities in AI Mode” program in Labs.

Currently, AI Mode can be accessed through a dedicated tab on search results and a button on the search bar. Google has suggested that AI Mode may soon become the default search experience. This was confirmed by Logan Kilpatrick, Group Product Manager at Google DeepMind, who hinted at the change while engaging with users online.

The new developments follow ongoing criticism that Google’s AI-powered search tools, including AI Mode and AI Overviews, are affecting website traffic by reducing the number of clicks to publishers. Independent website owners and digital publishers have voiced concern over traffic declines.

However, Google has dismissed these claims, stating last month that AI search tools are not killing website traffic and that billions of clicks are still being directed to publishers daily.

The development also highlights Google’s larger strategy of combining AI technology with its existing services, with future updates to add more agentic capabilities to further personalize user experience.