Google said Monday its artificial intelligence-powered search engine AI Mode, which launched in May in only English, is set to be available in Japanese and four other languages as it looks to broaden its global reach.

Aside from Japanese, the company said it is set to be available in Korean, Hindi, Indonesian and Brazilian Portuguese globally. At the time of writing, it was still unavailable in Japanese.

“Building a truly global Search goes far beyond translation — it requires a nuanced understanding of local information,” Hema Budaraju, vice president of Google Search’s product management, wrote in a blog post announcing the news. “With ... our custom version of Gemini 2.5 in Search, we’ve made huge strides in language understanding, so our most advanced AI search capabilities are locally relevant and useful in each new language we support.”

AI Mode was initially restricted to English usage and was only accessible in the U.S., U.K. and India.

Last month, it expanded its services to 180 countries and territories — although it was still only available in English.

“With this expansion, more people can now use AI Mode to ask complex questions in their preferred language, while exploring the web more deeply,” Budaraju wrote.

AI Mode, which uses Gemini 2.5, is Google’s competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity AI. The American AI giants are also competing against rapidly developing AI products from other countries — namely, China.

While traditional search engines, including Google Search, use algorithms, SEO content, cookies and caches to tailor results that meet browser preferences, AI Mode breaks search questions into multiple options and then draws on a wider net of data to provide a response. It can also process images and video transcripts.

This means that, like ChatGPT, it can respond to complex questions and tasks from users such as creating a six-night travel itinerary in Kyoto or recommending nice restaurants for dinner.

Google is dominant in the search engine market with nearly a 90% share globally, according to Statcounter, a web analytics company. But when it comes to the AI chatbot market, ChatGPT dominates with about an 81% share while Google’s Gemini has only 2.2%, Statcounter data shows.