Google Lens Comes to Mobile Image Search

Google Lens made its debut at Google I/O a few years ago, eventually coming to Pixel phones before expanding to most Android devices. Lens is another of Google’s semi-magical implementations of machine learning technology, in this case used to identify objects in images. Now, it’s coming to Google image search on mobile devices. Simply tap the Lens button, and Google will look for a match.

Starting now, every image in the mobile version of Search has a Lens icon next to share and save. You can tap that button to scan the image, allowing Lens to find relevant results from other images. In addition, Lens will proactively scan images and mark objects it recognizes with a small dot. You can tap that dot to get more image results immediately. The results slide up from the bottom of the screen in a scrolling interface that can take you to other image results, all of which have their own Lens button. You can really go down a machine learning rabbit hole.

The Lens button will default to scanning objects for which it has good results. That might mean just part of the full image gets analyzed at first. However, you can tap and drag to highlight specific areas of the image to get different results.

Google uses the example of redecorating a room to make a case for Lens in image search. If you see an image of a couch you like, Lens can find more instances of that same design in other images. Without even knowing what that particular style of sofa is called, you can find multiple retailers to buy it or maybe a different couch in the same style.

Keep in mind, this feature is different than searching by image in Google. That feature can look for different sizes and versions of the same photo, but Lens actually figures out what’s in the photo, then searches for similar objects in other images. Most phones also have Lens as part of Assistant, which opens a camera interface to look at real-world objects. That’s separate from the image search implementation. A few phones even have Lens integrated into the camera app, but that really just opens the Assistant viewfinder implementation.

Currently, Lens in image search is only supported for those searching in US English. Google will add Lens for more languages and countries soon.

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