Google’s I/O keynote has come around for another year, with a raft of new announcements relating predominantly to artificial intelligence advancements on the company’s software. There were updates to Google Search, Android 15 and a new Google chatbot. Let’s dig into some of the coolest announcements from Google I/O 2024.
Table of contents
Google I/O 2024: What are the major announcements?
New Search features
Google is bringing even more advanced AI features to its search engine. Google’s AI engine, Gemini, is getting a boost and will soon be able to use multi-step reasoning to answer more complex questions, allowing you to ask many things at once in a single search and receive an answer.
Search AI is also becoming more powerful with its planning features, allowing you to input prompts and come out with a plan for a meal, trip or exercise routine.
New Google search updates will allow you to take a video of something and then ask Google for answers on it, whether that be advice on fixing a broken item or identifying something around you.
Scam alerts
One of the coolest new features coming to Android 15, Google’s smartphone software that is available on the majority of Galaxy and Pixel devices, is a new scam detection feature.
Gemini Nano will soon be able to detect conversations taken place in real time in the Phone app on Pixel devices and listens for trigger words and phrases, which may indicate a scam is taking place. It will then prompt you that the call you’re on may be a scam.
Project Astra
During the 2024 I/O presentation, Google unveiled Project Astra its in-house generative AI assistant that rivals the likes of ChatGPT. According to Google, Project Astra is able to perceive and respond to the world the way humans do (totally normal!). The demo shown off during the presentation displayed Project Astra’s impressive processing capabilities, marking it as truly one to watch as we enter an even heavier AI-focused world.
Google Workspace updates
Google workspace (including Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail and more) is something many of us use every day.
In conjunction with its AI announcements, Google announced that Gemini 1.5 Pro would be integrated into the side panel of workspace apps, providing a larger context window with advanced reasoning that can assist you with everyday work processes like developing insightful email responses and a summary of things like email threads. In Google Meet, additional language support has been added to help you write in new languages, including Spanish and Portuguese.
Of course, Google had a whole range of other announcements we haven’t covered here, but you can find more info about that on its blog.
Lead Image: Google (Supplied)
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