Google’s ‘Ask Play’ upgrades start hitting Play Store users

One of Google’s major goals with AI involves changing the way we get answers. Instead of Search pointing us towards third-party resources that might address our questions, AI attempts to handle them directly — and keeping us close, in the process. Last year, we saw Google bring a feature just like that to the Play Store: “Ask Play about this app.” And now we’re starting to check out the next phase of its evolution.

When we first saw it last May, Ask Play had only just begun to appear in select Play Store app listings. By interacting with the box, users could ask questions about what features apps offered or how to use them.

Jump forward a few months to December, and Google updated its Play Store release notes:

With the new Ask Play experience, you’ll get an improved chat interface that lets you talk to the Play Store like a personal assistant.

So far, though, we hadn’t spotted any big updates to Ask Play. But it looks like Google’s finally starting to expose users to this new experience, as Telegram user @until_the_morning_light shares the changes they’re seeing with version 50.0.23-31 of the Play Store for Android:

Instead of only getting Ask Play to appear within app listings, here we can see Google now responding to questions right from the Play Store’s search bar. Results are delivered there on the search screen, and can be expanded for a lot more detail. At the bottom, Google offers some further Ask Play prompts to continue the interaction, or you’re free to ask another question of your own.

In addition to that new home for Ask Play, we also notice some changes to how it looks and works in app listings themselves:

Here, you’ll see a much larger Ask Play card slide up from the bottom of the screen. As you can see in this demo, the contextual awareness isn’t perfect, with Gemini stumbling over one attempt. But missteps aside, this looks like a useful, potentially very powerful expansion to Ask Play.

Right now, we’re mainly just curious when we might hope to see Google make these changes available to more users. We’ll be sure to update you with any clear evidence of a broader roll-out.