Google has launched its experimental AI app Dreambeans in India. It is the first market for the app outside the U.S.
The app is available on Android and iOS. In India, it supports 13 local languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali, as well as English.
The launch came on Monday, less than two months after Google opened the app to all eligible U.S. users aged 18 and older. Google first introduced Dreambeans in June.
How Dreambeans Works
Dreambeans creates personalized, illustrated stories about users’ interests and daily lives. It does this without asking users to type a prompt.
The app draws on information from connected Google services. These include Calendar, Gemini, Gmail, Photos, Search, and YouTube.
At first, the stories used only still, AI-generated pictures. Google recently added a feature that uses its Veo video model to animate images in some stories.
Google said it picked India because many users there asked for access to the app. The company also pointed to the wide use of its services in the country.
Google product manager Gozde Oznur said India stood out for its high overlap of users across Gemini, Gmail, and Google Photos. She shared the details during a press briefing.
US Downloads and Language Limits
Dreambeans has recorded nearly 55,000 downloads in the U.S. since June, according to estimates from Sensor Tower shared with TechCrunch. About 63% of those came in September, when the app opened to all eligible adults.
Downloads then fell 84% month over month to about 5,500 in October. In its first 30 days of wide U.S. availability, the app had an estimated 29,000 downloads.
By comparison, Meta’s Muse recorded 7.4 million downloads in its first 30 days, Sensor Tower estimates show. ChatGPT had 2.8 million, Grok Bot had 362,000, and Claude had 155,000. Unlike those general AI apps, Dreambeans focuses only on personalized stories.
In India, users can pick only one language at a time for their stories. The app can read information in several languages, but it cannot yet create stories that mix them, Oznur said.
This could limit the app’s appeal in India. Many people there often switch between languages, such as mixing Hindi and English in what is known as Hinglish.
The app uses Google’s Personal Intelligence technology to pull from connected services. Those services can hold sensitive personal information that some users may not want to share with an AI app.
Oznur said users can choose which services to connect and disconnect them at any time. They can also delete their Dreambeans data within the app, and data deleted from linked services is also removed from the app’s personalization system.
Users can tell Dreambeans to avoid certain topics, such as business information. The app is only for personal Gmail accounts, not enterprise users, and stories are visible only to the account holder.
Oznur also said the app could create stories involving people who have died. Users can tell it to stop showing certain subjects, similar to memory controls in Google Photos.
Oznur said Google is exploring ways to make Dreambeans more actionable. The goal is to help users act on the app’s suggestions, going beyond stories and recommendations.
