You can sign up to try the new Google Lens video search right now

Key Takeaways

• Google Lens now supports video search for Search Labs participants.
• You can record video and ask questions, but accuracy of answers may vary.
• Google Lens product manager says Google's different visual search products are distinct because people use them for different things.

Back in June, we got our first glimpse of upcoming Google Lens functionality that lets you search not only using photos, but also videos. Then, earlier this week, some users got access to that new option with very little fanfare — Android sleuth Mishaal Rahman broke the news on his Telegram channel, and some of us here at AP found that we could use Lens for video search shortly thereafter.

Today, Google's finally officially announcing the feature. While Google's announcement doesn't contain much in the way of new info about video search itself, it does reveal how to access it: video search in Google Lens is currently a Search Labs exclusive feature. If you're curious to try video search out but you're not already enrolled, it's easy to get in.

New multimodal Lens features are official

For users enrolled in Search Labs' AI Overviews and more experiment, searching with video in Lens is very simple: tap the Lens icon in the Google search bar, point your camera at what you want to ask about, and press and hold the shutter button. As you're recording, you can ask questions about the subject of the video. Google will try to parse the video and your question about it, then deliver an AI-powered summary of the answer.

Source: Mishaal Rahman

The process is surprisingly snappy, but it's not always fully accurate; in Mishaal's example above, the watch he scanned into Lens was actually a OnePlus Watch 2, but Lens identified it as a OnePlus Watch 2R. That's an easy enough mistake to make, though; the two watches are very similar.

If you're not a Search Labs participant, pressing and holding the shutter button won't record a video, but will instead snap a photo, then record audio while your finger is held down so you can ask questions out loud. The end result is similar: you'll get an AI-generated answer to your question.

How to sign up for Search Labs

To get in on Lens's new video capabilities, you'll need to sign up for Search Labs, then opt into the AI Overviews and more experiment. The new Lens video option is available in the Google app on Android and iOS.

Google demoed multimodal functionality in Gemini at I/O

Google showed off some Gemini-powered multimodal video capabilities at I/O earlier this year. While this new Lens feature is much more limited in scope than the wide-ranging Project Astra demos I got to try, it still feels like Google's visual search efforts — across Lens, Circle to Search, and Gemini — have a lot of overlap.

I asked Lens product manager Harsh Kharbanda about this apparent redundancy earlier this week, and he said that Google's various visual search products are distinct largely because of the the different ways people tend to use them.

Related

I saw Google's 'vision for the future of AI assistants' at I/O, and I'm cautiously optimistic

Project Astra is set to bring real-time multimodal input to Gemini

"People use these visual search products in different ways, and they have sort of slightly different mental models," Kharbanda told me. "So for (Lens), generally people ask questions about things in front of them. A plant that's dying, a coin that they found in the house, and they're like, hey how much is it worth, and so forth. For Circle to Search, almost all questions are about things on your screen. An Instagram influencer is sporting a new backpack and you're like, hey, like I want to know more about that."

"And in fact, in Gemini, a lot of the questions are more about creative collaboration. You know, like, what other artwork can my toddler do?" Kharbanda continued. "And so I think at this point, the way users are using these products is distinct enough that it makes sense to people to actually have these different entry points and different products across their journey and their phone."

Related

Google Lens: What it is and how to use it

Search, shop, translate, and more with Google Lens