Google I/O 2024: 12 major announcements you shouldn't miss
Google just wrapped up its annual I/O event and it had several announcements, all mainly focused on AI. Here are the 12 major announcements made at Google I/O 2024 that you shouldn't miss.
Pranav Sawant
Published:May 15, 2024, 02:43 AM | Updated: May 15, 2024, 02:43 AM
Smarter Google Search with AI Overviews
Google at I/O announced some features for Google Search that makes it smarter than ever. This includes revamping experimental Search Generative Experiences (SGE) to AI Overviews. AI Overviews is live and it offers better summaries. Further, the Circle to Search will now let you solve an equation or diagram.
Google Lens gets video search
Google Lens can now analyse videos and search the web to offer related answers. It will show an AI Overview related to the video and other related results including articles.
Google Nano into Chrome on desktop
Google has confirmed that it's building a Gemini AI model into Chrome on desktop. This will allow developers to power their own AI features. Google has planned to use this on-device capability to power features like the Help Me Write tool in Gmail.
Ask Photos feature in Google Photos
Google announced a much-needed change for Google Photos. Ask Photos is coming to the Photos app and it allows you to look for specific photos within the app. So you can ask the Gemini-powered tool within Google Photos for specific photos or content in them.
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Gemini app updates
Google shared several Gemini app updates. For starters, the app now supports 35+ languages. It also gets the Gemini Live feature enabling more in-depth human-like conversations with Gemini AI. Users can also customize Gemini, which Google calls Gems. You can create a Gem for specific purposes like a Gem for writing or tutoring.
Gemini Assistant updates
Google's Gemini AI assistant is now standard on Android phones. Gemini Assistant can now be invoked above an app to ask it to do different tasks. For instance, you can tell Gemini assistant to analyse a YouTube video playing in the background or analyze a PDF while in the PDF viewer.
Google Workspace updates
Google 1.5 Pro is coming to Google Workspace. This will enable a sidebar within workspace apps like Docs, Sheets, Slides, and others and help you with getting answers or summaries. For instance, you can analyze Excel and get a summary in the sidebar.
Google AI Teammate
Google Gemini-powered AI Teammate is a Workspace feature, however, it deserves a special mention. AI Teammate is like an AI bot for a team or working individuals. It can be set and enabled for workspace apps, and then it will help you remember certain things. Co-workers can also ask queries about certain things that it's set to do.
Project Astra
Project Astra is Google's multimodal AI project that can interpret things you show it with your phone's camera. Google demoed the feature and it via Gemini was able to detect things like a speaker's tweeter. It sounds way familiar to OpenAI's GPT-4o feature. However, Google's feature is a prototype so there's no information on its exact availability.
Gemini 1 5 Flash
Google has launched a new tier for the Gemini AI bot. Gemini 1.5 Flash is the lighter version of Gemini 1.5 Pro. It is capable of analyzing 1,500 pages of documents and a codebase of 30,000 lines. This is for the developers and will be available through Google AI Studio and Vertex AI.
Google Veo AI and Imagen 3
Google's Veo AI tool is a direct competitor to OpenAI's Sora. The new text-to-video AI video generator can produce 1080p high-res videos with just a few prompts. Imagen 3, on the other hand, is an advanced text-to-image tool that is said to create detailed and photorealistic images.
Google SynthID update
In addition to Google's other AI features, SynthID (a tool to identify AI-generated images) has received an update and it now works with video. The updated tool can mark videos that are generated by AI. It can also detect AI-generated text.