New AI Features, Pixel Fold and More Updates From This Year’s Google I/O
Google I/O is the company’s big spring event where the company can showcase new software and hardware that both customers and developers are looking forward to. This year, I/O lasted over two hours and was almost entirely devoted to AI. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but when there was so much talk about the new Google Pixel Fold in the leaks, you wouldn’t expect there to be so much talk about artificial intelligence.
However, AI is being talked about in tech city and Google is certainly thinking about it. Find out what the company is working on, including AI integrations with Google Maps, Docs and Android, and exciting hardware innovations like the Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet.
AI features for existing Google apps
Help Me Write prompts you to enter a hint in your email, such as “request a full refund”, and the feature will write an entire draft for you based on that idea. You can also refine messages using preset options such as Refine, which allows you to create longer messages. This feature will be part of the Workspace update.
Immersive View is a Google Maps feature that allows you to view cities in realistic 3D. Google will soon introduce “Immersive View for Routes”. With it, you can see any given route from a bird’s eye view with impressive 3D visualization. This includes things like weather effects and traffic effects so you can see what your hike might look like at any given time. This will happen in the summer, and by the end of the year it will be in 15 cities.
AI will appear next to Google Photos with Magic Editor. This feature lets you quickly edit photos in impressive ways: you can brighten up a scene, add clouds, and even move objects to a different part of the frame. In their demo photo, the child was off-center, holding a bunch of balloons cut off from the edge in the corner. The demonstrator moved the child to the center of the photo, while the Magic Editor digitally added the rest of the balloons and moved the bench the child was on. Magic Editor is coming later this year to select Pixel devices.
What’s next for the Bard?
Bard is Google’s AI chatbot, most similar to Microsoft’s Bing chat . Google has announced a large number of new updates to its big consumer-facing AI venture.
Now Bard knows more than 20 programming languages: you can ask him to help you write code or ask him to explain what specific lines of code do. Bard has got a dark theme (this announcement caused a storm of applause). It also works in Gmail and Google Docs.
Another big update is around images: Bard now uses images in its results and allows you to query AI with images. What’s more, Lens comes with Bard, so you can analyze any photo with AI.
When searching with Bard, you will be able to add new columns of data to the results. If you ask the AI for a list of colleges that match your specific interests and needs, you can go ahead and ask it to list which of those colleges are public or private. You can then ask it to move the entire result into Tables.
Integration with Bard can be very useful when working in Google applications. You can ask the AI to draft something like a job description using a simple prompt in Docs. In Sheets, the “Help me Organize” prompt can create detailed tables based on a simple sentence. In Slides, you can use AI to quickly create and insert Adobe Firefly based AI images and even change the style. In addition, Japanese and Korean are now supported, and Bard plans to support 40 languages ”soon”.
Partner
Sidekick is a useful new AI feature that helps you get more done in your Google apps. It analyzes the Google document and suggests options for how to proceed. It can read the entire email thread and take stock of what’s going on. For example, you can ask him to write a note about the dishes people bring to dinner, and he will give you a summary of the sources so you know that he is extracting the correct information from the email thread. (We don’t want to get hung up on speculation based on hallucinations .)
Finally, Sidekick in Slides lets you do things like automatically create speaker notes in slideshows. They can be a little cold and hard and sound like a robot, but they will give you a good starting point to work from.
AI in search
Google is also integrating artificial intelligence directly into search: it can give you a breakdown of different products when you search for something to buy. You can then select an extended question, such as “Ask a Question”, which puts you in “conversational” mode. This allows you to communicate with the AI to bring you closer to your desired outcome. This is very similar to Microsoft’s Bing chat.
Google Lab
Google has also highlighted several new projects it is working on at the Lab . For example, there’s Project Tailwind, an AI-powered notebook that can summarize text, come up with bullet points, look up key concepts, and create questions to help you learn from source material. You can join the waiting list today on the Google Lab website.
Privacy & Security
Google is adding new tools to help you determine if an image was created by artificial intelligence. It’s huge: while many of the AI images are clearly not real (look at the hands), it can sometimes be hard to tell. In addition, Google is supporting new metadata that will identify images as generated by artificial intelligence.
android updates
To kick off Android updates, Google announced that WhatsApp will be coming to WearOS this summer, making it easier to chat with friends and family on WhatsApp without taking out your phone.
There’s also a big update to Find My Device: The app now supports headphones, tablets, and more, creating a network similar to Apple’s Find My. These devices communicate with other Android devices to update their location in real time. Tile also works with the Find My Device network, which makes the product more attractive.
Google and Apple are also working together for the first time to help prevent FindMy-based harassment. Android now has “unknown tracker alerts” that will alert you if you’re being followed by a device you don’t know. This update will arrive later this summer.
Android also has its fair share of AI updates. There’s Magic Compose, which uses AI to rewrite your messages to add more context or change the tone. You can also use AI to create wallpapers from hints, which will help you to create completely unique and customizable wallpapers. Of course, Material You adapts to the color scheme of these new wallpapers, as it does with other wallpaper options. This feature will be released in the fall.
Also new is the ability to change the lock screen clock and the ability to use emoji to create custom wallpapers with different patterns and colors. “Cinema Wallpaper” adds 3D motion effects to your wallpaper photo. These changes will take place next month.
Pixel devices
After more than an hour and a half, Google finally turned to the hardware part of the event, which it spent surprisingly little time on. Summarizing its current technologies such as the Pixel Camera and popular features such as Pixel Speech, the company has unveiled the Pixel 7a, equipped with a Tensor G2 chip and 8GB of RAM. It comes in four colors (coral, marine, charcoal and snow) with a 6.1-inch 1080p display with a smooth 90Hz frequency. Google is proud of the new camera, which is said to have a 72% larger main camera sensor than the 6a. The phone starts at $499 and is available today .
Google also revealed more about the Pixel Tablet: Like the 7a, it uses a Tensor G2 chip with 8GB of RAM and has up to 256GB of internal storage. It features a 10.95-inch 1600p display and a charging dock, making it easy to use as a smart home display. It uses a fingerprint sensor to unlock and offers multiple user profiles (looks at you iPad) and even comes with a built-in Chromecast. Google offers three colors (china, walnut and pink) starting at $499 .
Finally, Google announced the Pixel Fold, the company’s first foldable device and the device most people wanted to see in action ( leaks notwithstanding ). Google touts it as the thinnest foldable phone on the market (unfolded). It has a 5.8-inch display on the front and a 7.6-inch display when unfolded. It has an IPX8 waterproof rating, which means it can withstand immersion in water up to one meter deep for 30 minutes, but is not rated for dust resistance .
Because it’s a foldable phone, you can do things with it that you can’t do with a regular phone, like the Pixel 7a. You can use it as a tripod by folding it in half, which is great for selfies and maybe a quick video. You can use both displays at the same time to turn the Fold into a live translation tool that makes it easy to communicate with someone in another language.
You can also easily switch from a small display to a maximized screen. Google calls this “continuity”: for example, you can watch a video on a smaller display and then open the Fold and watch the video on a larger screen without pause.
The Fold takes inspiration from Android tablet controls, including a docking station, drag-and-drop multitasking, a split keyboard, a dual-pane notification screen, and system controls. You can play videos on the top half of the foldable, while the controls are on the bottom. You can also use the smaller front display as a viewfinder for the rear camera to take better selfies.
Google is placing pre-orders for the new Pixel Fold starting today and shipping next month. It’s very expensive, starting at $1,799. It’s the same price as the Galaxy Z Fold , but still: Whoops! However, it comes with the Pixel Watch for free, if that’s what gets you going.