Google has recently concluded its Google I/O annual developer conference. The two-hour keynote saw the big tech company announce a chock-full of new AI-related features to the company’s search engine, apps, Android platform, and more. So much so that its CEO Sundar Pichai admitted that Google had said the word “AI” over 120 times throughout the event.
With so many to keep track of, we’ve prepared a summary of the important announcements made during the event for your convenience. Some of these we’ve already covered in detail via separate articles, which we’ll also link them accordingly in the list below.
Project Astra & Gemini
Project Astra: Google’s Project Astra is a multimodal AI assistant capable of understanding and interacting with visual inputs from a device’s camera. It aims to perform various tasks on behalf of the user.
Gemini Live for Conversations: The Gemini Live feature aims to make voice interactions more natural. It includes updates like adding personality to the chatbot’s voice, allowing interruptions mid-sentence, and providing real-time visual information processing.
AI Assistant in Google Chrome: Gemini Nano will be integrated into Chrome on desktop, helping users generate text for social media posts, product reviews, and more directly within the browser.
Whether you need a yoga bestie or calculus tutor, in the coming months you’ll be able to customize Gemini, saving time when you have specific ways you interact with Gemini again and again. We’re calling these Gems. #GoogleIO pic.twitter.com/YQOHsUbMWE
— Google (@Google) May 14, 2024
Custom Chatbots with Gems: The new Gems feature allows users to create customized chatbots tailored to specific needs, similar to OpenAI’s GPTs. This feature will soon be available for Gemini Advanced subscribers.
Gemini 1.5 Flash Model: Google introduced Gemini 1.5 Flash, a new multimodal AI model optimized for quick, high-frequency tasks. This model enhances translation, reasoning, and coding capabilities, and it has a doubled context window, increasing from 1 million to 2 million tokens.
Generative AI
Veo AI for Video Creation: Veo, Google’s generative AI model, can create 1080p videos based on text, image, and video prompts. It’s designed for use by YouTube creators and the film industry, offering various video styles like aerial shots and timelapses.
SynthID AI Watermarking: Google’s SynthID will now embed watermarks in content created with the Veo video generator and detect AI-generated videos to ensure authenticity.
Imagen 3: The third iteration of Google’s own generative AI image generator, Imagen, promises to create improved photorealistic images, with plenty of details and fewer distorted images. Signups for Imagen 3 opens today and it will be coming soon to developers and enterprise customers in Vertex AI.
Search & Apps
AI Overviews in Google Search: Google is rolling out “AI Overviews” to provide summarized answers on search results pages. This feature, formerly known as “Search Generative Experience,” will be available in the US first and eventually other countries soon.
Google Lens Video Search: Google Lens now allows users to search by recording a video. This feature enables users to take a video, ask questions during it, and receive relevant answers from Google’s AI.
“Ask Photos” in Google Photos: This new feature lets Gemini answer questions about users’ photo libraries. For example, users can inquire about specific details, such as a license plate number, and receive both the information and the relevant photo.
Gemini in Workspace: Gemini 1.5 Pro will soon be available in Google Workspace applications like Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, and Gmail. This integration will assist users by fetching information from Drive content, writing emails, and setting reminders.
Android
Enhanced AI on Android: Upcoming updates will allow users to ask questions about on-screen videos and PDFs, with Gemini providing answers based on automatic captions.
Circle to Search for Math Problems: Android users can now circle math problems on their screens to get step-by-step solutions, aiding in learning without directly providing the answers.
AI-Powered Scam Detection in Android: Using Gemini Nano AI, Android phones will soon detect scam calls by identifying common scam patterns and providing real-time warnings.
(Source: Google [YouTube] [Official blog])
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Telegram for more updates and breaking news.
