Google takes Dreambeans to India with 13 local languages

Google has launched its experimental AI app Dreambeans in India, its first market outside the U.S., as it looks to bring AI-generated personal stories drawn from users' digital activity to a far larger audience. The Android and iOS app supports 13 local languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali, alongside English. Dreambeans generates personalized, illustrated stories from connected Google services without requiring users to enter a prompt.

India launch and language support

Google expanded Dreambeans to India on Monday, less than two months after it opened the app to all eligible U.S. users aged 18 and older. Google product manager Gozde Oznur said India stood out for its high overlap of users across Gemini, Gmail and Google Photos. Google said it chose India because of strong interest from Indian users seeking access and the widespread use of its services in the country.

How Dreambeans works

Introduced in June, Dreambeans draws on information from connected Google services, including Calendar, Gemini, Gmail, Photos, Search and YouTube, to proactively generate personalized, illustrated stories about users' interests and everyday lives. Google recently added a feature that uses its Veo video-generation model to animate images in select stories.

Privacy and limitations

Users can choose which Google services to connect and disconnect them at any time. They can also delete their Dreambeans data from within the app, and Oznur said information deleted from the underlying services is also removed from the app's personalization system. Users can tell the app to avoid certain subjects, including business-related information. Dreambeans is available only to personal Gmail account holders, not enterprise users, and generated stories are visible only to the account holder.

Although the app supports many Indian languages, users can select only one language at a time, and Dreambeans cannot currently generate stories that mix languages, Oznur said. That could limit its appeal in India, where many people switch regularly between languages, including Hindi and English. Oznur also acknowledged that Dreambeans could generate stories involving people who have died, and said users can limit which subjects appear.

U.S. usage estimates

Dreambeans recorded nearly 55,000 downloads in the U.S. since its June debut, according to Sensor Tower estimates shared with TechCrunch. About 63% of those downloads came in September, when Google opened the app to all eligible U.S. users aged 18 and older. Downloads then dropped 84% month over month to about 5,500 in October. In the first 30 days after Google opened Dreambeans to all eligible U.S. users, the app recorded an estimated 29,000 downloads, compared with 7.4 million for Meta's Muse, 2.8 million for ChatGPT, 362,000 for Grok Bot and 155,000 for Claude during their respective first 30 days after launch. Unlike those general-purpose AI apps, however, Dreambeans focuses on personalized stories rather than answering a broad range of user queries.

Sources: TechCrunch · Techmeme