Google for India 2024 — the search giant’s annual India-focused event that showcases features and services aimed at users in the country — was held in New Delhi on Thursday. During the event, the Mountain View-based tech giant unveiled several new features and services including new capabilities for its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Gemini. The company launched a two-way verbal communication feature called Gemini Live last month and is now being updated with support for Hindi and eight other regional Indian languages.

Gemini Live gets support for Hindi and regional languages

Hema Budaraju, Senior Director (Product Management) announced that Gemini Live is being updated with support for Hindi and other regional languages. The AI-powered feature allows users to have a real-time conversation with a chatbot, using natural language. Users can verbally ask the AI ​​queries, and it responds to them in a similar manner. The feature, developed by Google DeepMind, was first introduced during Google I/O.

In August, the feature was first rolled out to Gemini Advanced subscribers. The company later made Gemini Live available to users on the free Gemini tier on Android devices. Until now, the feature was only available to English speakers.

Budaraju revealed that support for Gemini Live is coming in Hindi as well as Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Urdu languages. The chatbot will allow native speakers to take advantage of new functionality that can accept queries in those languages ​​as well as generate verbal responses. Gadgets 360 staff members were able to access the feature in some of these languages.

Gemini Live can perform all the generative tasks of a text chatbot. This means users can use it to ask additional questions, without having to provide the full context each time. This allows users to have a free conversation, similar to a conversation with another human. Despite generating real-time responses, it lacks contextual voice modulation and the ability to express emotions like ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode.

To use Gemini Live, users can simply open the Gemini app or activate Gemini Assistant on their Android device. There they will find a new waveform icon placed next to the text field. Tapping on it opens the feature’s full-screen interface. Users can start speaking their queries and the AI ​​will answer them almost instantly. To stop or end Gemini, users can tap either of the two buttons — Hold and End Call — located at the bottom of the screen.