Google brings its experimental AI app Dreambeans to its first foreign market — India

What happened

Google has launched its experimental AI app Dreambeans in India — the company's first market outside the US. According to TechCrunch, the app is available on Android and iOS with support for 13 local languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali, as well as English. The launch came less than two months after Google opened access to the app in September to all eligible users in the US aged 18 and older.

How the app works

Dreambeans was introduced in June. The app uses information from connected Google services — Calendar, Gemini, Gmail, Photos, Search and YouTube — and proactively creates personalized illustrated stories about the user's interests and everyday life, without requiring any prompt. Initially, the stories consisted of static AI illustrations, but Google recently added a feature to animate images in individual stories using its video-generating model Veo.

Why India

Google explained the choice of India by strong interest from Indian users in the app and the wide adoption of its services in the country. According to Google product manager Gozde Oznur, India stood out for the high overlap of Gemini, Gmail and Google Photos users. India is the world's second-largest internet market, where Google hopes to bring personalized visual stories to a broader audience.

Modest numbers in the US

According to Sensor Tower estimates shared with TechCrunch, Dreambeans has racked up about 55,000 downloads in the US since its June debut, with roughly 63% of them in September — the month access was opened to all adult users. However, in October downloads fell 84% month over month — to about 5,500. For comparison: in the first 30 days after access was opened , Dreambeans received about 29,000 downloads, while Meta Muse got 7.4 million, ChatGPT 2.8 million, Grok Bot 362,000, and Claude 155,000. That said, unlike these general-purpose AI apps, Dreambeans focuses on generating personalized stories rather than answering a wide range of queries.

Limitations and privacy questions

Despite support for many widely spoken languages of India, the user can choose only one language for the generated stories: the app can draw information from Google services in different languages, but it cannot yet create stories that mix languages. This may limit Dreambeans' appeal in a country where many people regularly switch between languages, including blending Hindi and English in so-called Hinglish.

Data and control

The app's reliance on Google account data raises privacy questions: Dreambeans uses Personal Intelligence technology to access connected services that may contain sensitive personal information. Oznur noted that users can choose which services to connect and disconnect them at any time, delete Dreambeans data from the app, and that information removed from the source services is also deleted from the personalization system. Users can ask the app to avoid certain topics, such as work-related information. Dreambeans is available only to owners of personal Gmail accounts, and the created stories are visible only to the account owner.