Google has expanded Dreambeans, its experimental AI storytelling app, to India. It is the app’s first market outside the United States and supports 13 Indian languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali, as well as English. Dreambeans is available on Android and iOS.
Introduced in June, Dreambeans draws on information from connected Google services such as Calendar, Gemini, Gmail, Photos, Search and YouTube to generate illustrated stories about a user’s interests and daily life. Users do not need to submit a prompt. Google has also added a feature that uses its Veo video-generation model to animate images in selected stories.
Google product manager Gozde Oznur said the company chose India because users there had shown strong interest in the app and Google services are widely used in the country. She pointed to overlap among users of Gemini, Gmail and Google Photos.
The app’s language options have a limitation: users can choose only one language for their stories at a time. Dreambeans can use information from Google services in several languages, but it cannot yet produce stories that mix languages, Oznur said.
Dreambeans relies on Google’s Personal Intelligence technology to personalize stories using connected account data. Users decide which services to connect, can disconnect them at any time and can delete their Dreambeans data in the app. Oznur said information removed from connected services is also removed from Dreambeans’ personalization system.
Users can ask the app to avoid particular subjects, including business-related information. Dreambeans is limited to personal Gmail accounts, and generated stories are visible only to the account holder. Oznur also acknowledged that stories could surface upsetting memories, such as one involving someone who has died; users can tell the app not to show certain subjects.
Sensor Tower estimates cited by TechCrunch put Dreambeans’ U.S. downloads at nearly 55,000 since its June debut. About 63% came in September, when Google opened the app to all eligible U.S. users aged 18 and older. Downloads then fell 84% month over month to about 5,500 in October.
Google is exploring ways to make Dreambeans more actionable, Oznur told reporters, extending it beyond personalized stories and recommendations to help users act on its suggestions.
Sources: TechCrunch.