Google Gemini AI: What’s really new right here?

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

“There have been so many guarantees, so many ‘coming quickly’s, and never sufficient real-world helpfulness in terms of 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 right this moment, we’re getting actual … we’ll reply the largest query individuals have about AI, what can AI do for me?”

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

This is a whole record of every thing the 90-minute occasion provided in precise functioning demonstrations. Actual-world helpfulness, in different phrases, versus advertisements or guarantees.

1. Gemini can test your Google calendar to see in the event you’re free for a future live performance, primarily based on a poster.

Thanks, Gemini!
Credit score: Google

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 “test my calendar and see if I am free when she’s coming to San Francisco this 12 months” (“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 do not see any occasions in your calendar throughout that point.”

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 principle, Apple Intelligence will do the identical factor when it debuts.

Citron’s subsequent demos confirmed how Gemini may 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 Stay gives ‘free-flowing dialog’

Subsequent up, Google VP Jenny Blackburn confirmed off the Gemini Stay 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 circulation.

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

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

This is a function that could be much less creepy than it sounds: Name Notes, which “follows up in your telephone calls with a totally personal abstract of the dialog.” However don’t fret, as a result of it is utilizing Gemini Nano, an AI service that’s primarily based fully on the Pixel 9 telephone with out requiring cloud entry. (The on-device half isn’t 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 probably the most helpful AI function of 2024.

However after that, we received plenty of visible stuff we have seen AI assistants do a dozen occasions earlier than. To wit: creating a celebration invite in Pixel Studios, auto-framing in Magic Editor, including generative AI pictures to your picture, inserting your self right into a household picture or an image with a celeb (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).

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