A report suggests that Google may bring more features to its AI-powered Circle to Search, including text-to-speech functionality. The visual search feature, first announced in January, allows users to circle, touch or highlight an object on their screen using gestures and search for it on the web. Google, at its developer conference on May 14, announced an update, equipping the feature with math-solving capabilities. A new report now suggests that even more capabilities could be coming soon with three features predicted to be on the way.
In a report, Android Authority, in collaboration with whistleblower AssembleDebug, revealed that the Circle to Search feature could soon read a selected part of the screen aloud. The discovery was reportedly made after doing the teardown of the Google beta app v15.20.36.29 APK. This refers to possible text-to-speech capabilities in Circle to Search. Two more features may also be introduced: Listen and Select All, the report suggests.
It was also reported that the “Listen” and “Select All” features could be adopted from Google Lens, where the Listen feature reads highlighted text aloud while the “Select Text” option can highlight the text present in the image or visible in the image. the camera viewfinder.
The report also suggested that the “Save” option could be available to users when selecting an area of the screen to search. Using this option would save the screenshot in the Google app's Save tab in a “Loaded images” collection instead of the device's gallery app, which is usually Google Photos.
In theory, all the features that are tipped could contribute to the recently introduced Circle to Search. Initially only available on the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, it has made its way to other Android smartphones in recent months.
Since its introduction, the feature has received multiple new updates aimed at improving its capabilities. One of the highlights is a specialized tool that allows students to solve math and physics problems with step-by-step instructions. It uses LearnLM, the recently introduced family of AI large language models (LLM) that are tailored for learning, based on Google's Gemini LLM.
