Earlier this month, Google added a new function to its Search application, now available to users of both Android and iOS in India. This feature, powered by generative artificial intelligence, goes by the name AI Mode. It marks another small but deliberate step in the broadening role of machine intelligence in daily affairs.
PDF Uploads Now Supported & Deep Research Capabilities
The company has since introduced further updates. Once the app has been brought to its latest version, users will gain the ability to upload PDF files. These can then be read in full by the AI, which will produce a shortened version, stripped of excess and reduced to its essential points. For pupils grappling with science texts, this may offer a real advantage. What might have taken an hour to work through becomes something clear and quickly understood.
But the capacity does not end there. Should the reader wish to look further into a topic, the system can seek out more detail, pulling from science sources that are known to be credible. In this way, the tool becomes more than a convenience; it offers a quiet shift in how people come to know things, not by search, but by suggestion.
New Canvas Tool Helps Plan and Organize Thoughts with AI Support
Another addition is something called the Canvas, a tool meant to help users set out their intentions for the days or weeks ahead. It is simple in appearance, but its purpose is plain enough: to bring order to a disordered routine. For students and office workers alike, it offers a way to keep one’s mind on the task at hand. A student, for example, need only type a short phrase “Create a Canvas” into the search bar while AI Mode is active. In an instant, panels appear, and from there the user may shape the guide to suit their own ends, drawing upon course notes, syllabi, or other files at hand.
There is also a second feature of note: Search Live, now with the use of video input. Here, too, the change is quiet but far-reaching. It draws directly from Project Astra, a system built on Google’s most advanced speech technologies. For those unfamiliar with the name, Astra is designed to listen, to hold long and varied conversations, and to carry out a series of commands without delay or confusion. The idea, it seems, is not merely to assist but to anticipate, to reduce the friction of everyday tasks until they are almost forgotten.
Real-Time Visual Problem Solving
Take, for example, a case where the user points their camera at a page covered with a difficult maths problem. The system can break it down at once, offering each step in turn, so that the answer is not merely given but explained. To begin, one need only open the Lens tool in the Google app, tap on the Live symbol, and speak aloud whatever question comes to mind while keeping the camera fixed on the subject.
The conversation need not be stiff or limited. With AI Mode active, the user may speak freely, and the machine will reply in kind, drawing on the images before it, whether still or in motion, from different sides or at different distances. In this way, the tool becomes almost like a companion, able to see and think at once. These features, taken together, form the latest part of the AI Mode expansion. They will arrive by means of an app update, first to users in the United States, where they are expected by the end of the week. Other countries, India among them, will receive the changes shortly after.
Final Words
The spread of AI Mode in Google is not merely another technological upgrade but the next step of the corporation in its effort to be our digital butler, therapist, and study buddy in one. Google is basically saying, “We got this.” PDF summarization that would leave CliffsNotes in tears, a Canvas feature that will help us to get our lives together and Search Live that can solve math problems before most students can start panicking about them, this is Google. It is yet to be determined whether this is a glorious procession of mankind into an easy life of productivity or a gradual descent into AI addiction.
There is one thing that is definite, and that is that students all over the world are soon going to find out how much their textbooks actually needed to say in the first place. With these features being implemented around the world, we must ask ourselves whether Google is interested in making us smarter, or whether they just want to make thinking optional. In any case, our cameras will at least have something to look at other than our lunch.







