Google Lens in desktop Chrome is receiving an exciting AI-powered upgrade that brings it closer to a desktop version of Circle to Search. With a new Chrome update, users can simply click a button in the search box to activate Google Lens, allowing them to search for items of interest. This feature includes a sidebar that appears within the tab being viewed, enabling users to perform a “multisearch” combining text and image search results from Lens.
This enhancement offers a more convenient way to search, eliminating the need to navigate away from the current page to conduct a separate Google search or open a new tab. Although users could previously activate Google Lens through a right-click or the three dots menu and view results in a sidebar on desktop Chrome, the addition of the Google Lens icon in the search bar and the ability to multisearch directly from the sidebar are new improvements.
According to a blog post by Chrome VP Parisa Tabriz, this feature will be rolled out globally over the next few days. The sidebar search results may include Google’s AI Overviews, with the caveat that this feature will only be accessible to US users, as confirmed by Google spokesperson Joshua Cruz to The Verge.
Furthermore, Google is introducing another AI-powered feature to Chrome that allows users to ask questions about their search history to locate specific links of interest. For instance, users can inquire about a previously visited ice cream shop to retrieve relevant links from their browsing history.
This feature, set to launch in the US on desktop Chrome in the coming weeks, is opt-in and relies on a cloud-based model for generating results. Tabriz also mentioned the potential for running the model on-device in the future, once performance reaches a satisfactory level for optimal user experience.
