All New AI Features Coming to Google Pixel Devices
Today’s Made By Google event was Android’s last and best chance to up its AI game before the release of Apple Intelligence this fall. Google already had a big AI event earlier this year , but after a somewhat disappointing response, all eyes were on the Pixel 9 launch to up the game.
Today’s new AI features aren’t exactly groundbreaking, but given that Apple Intelligence will reportedly be using AI-powered Siri and some of its own innovations next year , they may be enough to keep the race on a level playing field for now . .
Add me
My personal favorite AI addition to the Pixel 9 is Add Me, a photo feature that finally allows everyone in your group to participate in the photo. The idea is to take a photo, then change the person holding the camera and take another one. Add Me will then intelligently merge both photos to make it look as if the original photographer was there all along.
It’s simple, makes sense, and does something you couldn’t do on your own. It also allows you to use the rear cameras for group shots rather than trying to squeeze everyone into the selfie camera, giving you more powerful lenses and more space to work with. It looks like it will be a versatile enhancement for travel photos or fun parties, and I can see my fiancé and I using it a lot on our upcoming honeymoon.
Screenshots
Another great example of the use of artificial intelligence in the Pixel 9 is the new Screenshots app. Gemini Nano is used to sort all your screenshots and add AI titles and descriptions to them to make it easier for you to search and categorize them in the future. For example, let’s say you took a screenshot of your concert tickets, but a few months later you had trouble finding them when it was time to hit the road. The screenshots will be tagged for you so you can simply search for “concert tickets” and find it easily. It can also extract information from the photo itself, telling you where the venue is or where your seats are.
This is another example of AI being used as a utility that automatically adds extra useful features to your phone that aren’t easily dismissed as a novelty. Google says Screenshots works entirely on your phone using the Gemini Nano, so you don’t have to worry about your personal information going to the cloud.
Pixel studio
Like Apple’s Image Playground on its own devices, Google Pixels get their own AI-powered image generator. It’s called Pixel Studio and allows users to select an art style and enter a hint to get custom images.
It’s not as robust as Apple’s option since you can’t quickly create emoji or stickers for your messaging app, but you can import photos to use in AI-generated images, or cut out parts of one generated image to paste into another. There are also plenty of text options.
Likewise, you can also use Pixel Studio without any AI at all, allowing you to quickly mark up or merge your own photos.
Pixel Studio uses a combination of AI in the cloud and on the device depending on your application, so keep this in mind when adding any photos with sensitive information to the app.
New weather app
Google also announced its new Pixel Weather app today, and while it mainly focuses on displaying your forecast and details like wind speed or humidity, it’s worth mentioning the slight inclusion of artificial intelligence. If you’re like me, you don’t want to spend more than a minute looking at the forecast—I just look at it so I know what to wear and whether I should bring an umbrella. For people like us, Gemini will be able to read the data in your weather app and summarize it for you.
Call Notes
Perhaps the most direct comparison to Apple Intelligence in today’s announcements was Call Notes, which will use artificial intelligence to create transcripts and summaries of your phone calls. This is a private feature that works natively, and the person you’re calling will be notified when you turn it on.
By adding AI summaries, Call Notes actually improves on what Apple offered, so it will be interesting to see how the iPhone maker responds.
Improvements to existing features
In addition to new AI features, Google is looking to improve the AI already found in its phones.
This is perhaps most noticeable in the Magic Editor, which gets a new auto-crop feature that can recompose your photos for maximum effect, as well as use generative fill to add to them when needed. Google says it trained this feature on the rule of thirds and the golden ratio, so hopefully it knows what it’s doing. If not, you can always use the new “reimagine” feature to add an AI-generated background to your photo.
Staying in the photography realm, the updated Panorama mode will help guide you through the panorama shooting process in more detail. You’ll also be able to use Night Sight for panoramas, which lets you send your photos to the cloud so they can be tweaked for brightness and visibility.
Likewise, Pixel Pro phones with Video Boost will get faster video rendering, be able to shoot high-resolution videos at 20x zoom, apply HDR+ across the entire zoom range, and have access to AI upscaling up to 8K.
Beyond photos, Google Clear Calling, which reduces background noise in phone calls, is getting general improvements for narrowband calls over LTE.
Android’s Gemini assistant has also seen some changes, allowing you to chat with it via “Gemini Live”, which will first be available in English for Gemini Advanced subscribers. According to Google, you’ll be able to speak to the bot in a natural voice and have it respond in one of several customizable voices. In the live demo this worked quite well, but there was a point where the presenter interrupted the demonstration of it. In the future, Google is also promising to add video input to Gemini Live, as shown at Project Astra at Google I/O earlier this year.
There’s more for Geminis, like a “magic list” feature that will generate lists for you based on prompts (for example, it might list all the ingredients needed for “taco night dinner for a family of four”). Google is also promising overall improvements to Gemini Assistant’s understanding, accuracy, and integration with workspace apps.
You’ll be able to experience the full Gemini experience for yourself, whether you buy a Pixel 9 Pro, Nano or not. That’s thanks to the free year of Gemini Advanced that Google is adding to all Pixel 9 purchases.
That’s it for the new AI on Google Pixel devices. As expected, this isn’t exactly an AI revolution, and the company isn’t entirely clear on when or if all the new features will make it to older phones. But perhaps slow and gradual is the right approach now, as the AI bubble finally begins to burst .