Ryan Haines / Android Authority
I might be that annoying friend — the one who always wants to fact-check something. I’m not usually trying to be obnoxious, I just want to make sure I’m getting the correct information, especially when things are so easily faked right now (sorry, it’s true). Honestly, I’ve always been this way, and I think it started with a heavy reliance on Google Lens.
Seriously, though, I used Google’s camera-based identifier for everything. Unfamiliar shoes? Google Lens. Weird plant? Google Lens. Dog I’ve never seen before? I’ll usually ask its owner, but you get the idea. Then, Google transitioned its default identification assistant to Circle to Search, emphasizing what was on your screen more, and it threw me for a loop. I struggled to adopt it in just the same way, and then the arrival of Apple Visual Intelligence made me wonder if I needed Google at all.
At first, the answer was definitely yes. Apple Intelligence stumbled out of the gate, and some say it’s still struggling. Visual Intelligence, however, has made up ground in the year since its launch, and I think it’s finally ready to give Google some trouble, so I put the two head-to-head to find out.
Visual Intelligence looks great, but Circle to Search is cleaner
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
I don’t know when we settled on it, but apparently, the color of AI is a rainbow — unless you ask Samsung, who thinks it’s blue. The good news, though, is that I like the pop of color on both Visual Intelligence and Circle to Search. It’s distinctive and makes it easy to tell what you’re searching for.
In other words, if Apple or Google had settled on one color for their respective on-screen search tools, it would have been fine. You’d know when the feature was active and be perfectly capable of selecting an object on your screen. However, you’d always run the risk that it would match the primary color of your image or article and accidentally blend in with the background. Then, all accessibility bets are off.
If not for the rainbow shine, I might not know just what I'd circled to search.
Outside of the similar color schemes, I have to give Apple and Google a little more credit for their additional controls. Searching for what’s on your screen is one thing, but sometimes, you need more than an image. In the case of Visual Intelligence, you get one button to open a dialogue with ChatGPT and another to snap a photo to search from. They’re fine, but they show signs that Visual Intelligence is still a work in progress.
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