What’s really new in Google Gemini AI?

Shoppers and traders are sick of AI hype, and Google is aware of it.

“There have been so many promises, so many ‘coming soon’s, and not enough real-world helpfulness when it comes to AI,” Google senior VP Rick Osterloh stated on the “Made by Google” occasion that unveiled new Pixel telephones in Mountain View Tuesday. “Which is why today, we’re getting real … we’re going to answer the biggest question people have about AI, what can AI do for me?”

OK, so did Google stay as much as that promise? Whenever you strip the keynote of all of the bells and whistles — the superstar appearances, the jargon about “Tensor Processing Units,” the Pixel telephone tech specs, the visions of what Gemini would possibly be capable of do in the long term — what was new in regards to the Android expertise right here? And does any of it qualify as essential killer app?

This is an entire checklist of all the things the 90-minute occasion supplied in precise functioning demonstrations. Actual-world helpfulness, in different phrases, versus advertisements or guarantees.

1. Gemini can examine your Google calendar to see in case you’re free for a future live performance, based mostly on a poster.

Poor Dave Citron. Within the keynote’s most awkward second, this Google product lead needed to invoke “the demo spirits” and change telephones earlier than Gemini would really show a solution to “check my calendar and see if I’m free when she’s coming to San Francisco this year” (“she” being the artist Sabrina Carpenter; Citron had simply despatched Gemini a photograph of her live performance poster).

“Sabrina Carpenter is coming to San Francisco on November 9, 2024,” Gemini finally responded. “I don’t see any events on your calendar during that time.”

AI studying the textual content in a picture and understanding the context is not new. The calendar add is, and that is to Google’s benefit. In idea, Apple Intelligence will do the identical factor when it debuts.

Citron’s subsequent demos confirmed how Gemini might draft a letter to a landlord a couple of damaged AC unit, or a professor a couple of class — well-trod floor for all AI assistants.

2. Gemini Reside presents ‘free-flowing dialog’

Subsequent up, Google VP Jenny Blackburn confirmed off the Gemini Reside voice assistant. They’d a chat about science experiments her niece and nephew would possibly like, and after some back-and-forth, settled on making invisible ink. The dialogue had a conversational stream.

All nicely and good, besides that OpenAI demonstrated its GPT-4o voice assistant, with equally interruptible conversations, again in Might. That function is at present stay for a small group of ChatGPT Plus customers, however not all. So Google obtained there first, we guess?

3. Gemini Nano presents on-device summaries of your telephone calls

This is a function which may be much less creepy than it sounds: Name Notes, which “follows up on your phone calls with a completely private summary of the conversation.” However don’t be concerned, as a result of it is utilizing Gemini Nano, an AI service that’s based mostly totally on the Pixel 9 telephone with out requiring cloud entry. (The on-device half will not be new; Samsung does the identical with Galaxy AI.)

4. Screenshots are searchable.

Rating yet one more success for Gemini Nano on what we’re calling essentially the most helpful AI function of 2024.

However after that, we obtained numerous visible stuff we have seen AI assistants do a dozen instances earlier than. To wit: creating a celebration invite in Pixel Studios, auto-framing in Magic Editor, including generative AI photos to your picture, inserting your self right into a household photograph or an image with a star (the brand new and embarrassingly named “Add Me” function). Plus stuff that was cute however not AI in any respect (the “Made You Look” function that may level your kid’s consideration on the Pixel’s rear-facing display screen).

So, will this function set be sufficient to reverse the skepticism that has set in across the AI bubble? Do not rely on Gemini to reply that one any time quickly.