Google’s Circle to Search to Reportedly Get Text-to-Speech Functionality and More Features

Google may bring more features to its AI-powered Circle to Search including text-to-speech functionality, a report suggests. The visual lookup feature, first announced in January, allows users to circle, tap or highlight an object on their screen via gestures and search it on the web. Google, at its developer conference on May 14, announced an update for it, equipping the feature with math-solving capabilities. A new report now suggests that even more capabilities may soon be arriving with three features tipped to be in the works.

In a report, Android Authority, teaming up with tipster AssembleDebug, revealed that the Circle to Search feature may soon read a select part of the screen out loud. The discovery was reportedly made upon carrying out the APK teardown of the Google beta app v15.20.36.29. This hints at potential text-to-speech capabilities coming to Circle to Search. Two other features – Listen and Select All, may also be introduced, the report suggests.

It was also reported that both ‘Listen’ and ‘Select All’ features might be adopted from Google Lens, where the Listen feature reads a highlighted text out loud while the ‘Select Text’ option may highlight the text present in the image or visible in the camera viewfinder.

The report also suggested that a ‘Save’ option might be available to users upon selecting an area of the screen to search. Using this option would reportedly save the screenshot in the Saved tab on the Google app in an ‘Uploaded Images’ collection instead of the device’s gallery app, which is usually Google Photos.

In theory, all of the features that are tipped could contribute to the recently introduced ones in Circle to Search. Initially only available on the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, it has made its way to other Android smartphones in the last few months.

Since its introduction, the feature has received multiple new updates aimed at enhancing its capabilities. One of the standouts among them is a specialised 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 tuned for learning, built on Google’s Gemini LLM.