Google for India 2024 — the search giant's annual India-focused event that showcases features and services designed for users in the country — was held on Thursday in New Delhi. During the event, the Mountain View-based tech giant introduced several new features and services including new capabilities of its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Gemini. The company rolled out a two-way verbal communication feature dubbed Gemini Live last month, and it is now being updated with support for Hindi and eight other regional Indian languages.
Gemini Live Gets Hindi and Regional Language Support
Hema Budaraju, Senior Director (Product Management) announced that Gemini Live was being updated with support for Hindi and other regional languages. The AI-powered feature allows users to have a real-time conversation with the chatbot, using natural language. Users can verbally ask the AI queries and it responds to them similarly. The feature, developed by Google DeepMind, was first unveiled 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 tier of Gemini on Android devices. Until now, the feature was only available to English speakers.
Budaraju revealed that support for Gemini Live in Hindi as well as Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, and Urdu was rolling out. The chatbot will allow native language speakers to take advantage of the new functionality that can accept prompts in these 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 the text-based chatbot. This means users can use it to ask follow-up questions, without having to provide the entire context every time. This allows users to have a free-flowing conversation, similar to a conversation with another human. Despite generating responses in real-time, it lacks contextual voice modulation and the capability of expressing emotions like ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode.
To use Gemini Live, users can simply open the Gemini app or activate the 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 full-screen interface of the feature. Users can begin speaking their queries and the AI will respond to it almost instantaneously. To stop or interrupt Gemini, users can tap either of two buttons — Hold and End call — placed at the bottom of the screen.
