Google I/O 2024 live updates: The latest on Gemini AI, Android 15 and more
We're bringing you news from the company's developer conference as it unfolds.
Google is gearing up to share a slew of news around AI and Search at its I/O developer conference on May 14, and we expect a ton of announcements around Gemini, Android, Search and more. The company couldn't even wait till its own keynote to let us in on what it's been cooking, and has already teased us with a video of an intriguing camera-based AI feature on its social accounts.
Based on what we know so far, this is shaping up to be a hours-long launch event chock full of announcements. If you can't watch Google's I/O 2024 keynote for that much time, or prefer a text-and-images approach, we've got the liveblog for you. Our reporters Karissa Bell and Sam Rutherford will be at Shoreline Amphitheater to bring you the news live, with backup from the entire Engadget home team. Come back around 12pm ET on May 14th to hang with us as we cover all the updates from Google I/O 2024!
129 Updates
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Gemini will be accessible in the side panel on Google apps like Gmail and Docs
Google's Aparna Pappu onstage with a
Google is adding Gemini-powered AI automation to more tasks in Workspace. In its Tuesday Google I/O keynote, the company said its advanced Gemini 1.5 Pro will soon be available in the Workspace side panel as "the connective tissue across multiple applications with AI-powered workflows," as AI grows more intelligent, learns more about you and automates more of your workflow.
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Thanks for joining us. We're off to try and get a closer look at some of the things Google announced today at I/O.
Oh, and that Sundar bumped that final AI count up one more time to 121.
Who wants to bet if Google will top that next year?
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Frankly I'm just glad it didn't last any longer than that. While Sam and Karissa go and check out whatever demos might be available at I/O 2024, come on over and join myself and senior reviewer Devindra Hardawar on Engadget's YouTube channel. I'm sure you have thoughts and feelings to share on everything Google just announced!
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And that's a wrap on the keynote, it was *just* under 2 hours of all things Gemini and AI.
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Even Google is cracking jokes about how many times people said AI
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120 mentions of "AI" in this keynote, according to Sundar (who just came back onstage) and Gemini. I actually would have guessed a bit higher.
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Gems will use the new LearnLM model, which is based on Gemini.
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Google, like most of its AI peers, plans to use watermarking to increase transparency around AI-generated content with SynthID. Those watermarks will be expanding to AI-generated video (remember those Veo demos from earlier?) and text, which is especially interesting because AI-generated text is so much more prevalent (and in some ways harder to detect than images or video).
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SynthID is a tool that Google is making so that it's easy detect AI-generated content. But it also sounds like something from the Blade Runner universe that people can use to detect replicants.
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We're getting into "building AI responsibly" portion, with a look at Google's approach to red-teaming, the process for looking for threats, "problematic" outputs and other issues that might cause problems for Google (and maybe the rest of us). After the fiasco with Gemini's image generator earlier this year, I'm actually surprised they waited this long to bring all this up.
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James Manyika at Google I/O 2024 talks about AI ethics and responsibility.
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So it appears we've reached the developer-focused section of the I/O keynote. Karissa and I were just talking about how for non-developers, it can be hard to contextualize the amounts of tokens available in various Gemini plans.
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We're getting a deeper dive into Gemini Flash, which we first heard about at the top of the keynote. Flash is the "lighter weight" Gemini model that has lower latency and is more efficient. It sounds like this is meant for developers and organizations that don't need the full power of Gemini 1.5 Pro but still want to take advantage of multimodal capabilities.
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Yea, I think the scam alert feature is really nice, because it can give you a gut check in real-time when you might be feeling that a call feels a little sus.
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Google Gemini can power a virtual AI teammate with its own Workspace account
Google I/O
Google's Gemini AI systems can do a lot, judging by today's I/O keynote. That includes the option to set up a virtual teammate with its own Workspace account. You can configure the teammate to carry out specific tasks, such as to monitor and track projects, organize information, provide context, pinpoint trends after analyzing data and to play a role in team collaboration.
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Josh Woodward is back to talk about various Gemini models available to developers.
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Google has another solution to the never-ending scam calls. If you pick up, and it detects that the call is "suspicious" or a likely scam, it can surface a big alert right on your phone, potentially saving you from buying thousands of dollars of gift cards or transferring funds to a rogue account. A lot of those scams seem obvious, but people still fall for them and this might help.
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TalkBack updates
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Like, will we ever see the day where you're allowed to bring a phone to take the SATs? Because if not, you're potentially giving students an aid they might not being able to use during important evaluations, which might end up being a disadvantage.
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Karissa, I think Circle to Search supporting formulas is weird because for older types like us (or at least me), it feels like cheating.
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I hate searching for something and getting a 5-minute YouTube video as a result so being able to "ask this video" instead is something I could definitely see myself using. I wonder if you still have to watch the pre-roll?
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Dave Burke talking deeper Gemini integration in Android at Google I/O.
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Circle to search will soon support formulas.
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I understand why it would be helpful for Google to help with homework questions but there's something that still feels a bit off about encouraging students and parents to punt homework help over to Google's AI.
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OK, sidenote: They showed a photo of someone searching for Fly by Jing sauce. That stuff is great.
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We've finally started the Android portion of the keynote. Wow, Gemini is "becoming the new AI assistant on Android" so I guess Google Assistant is dead?
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Finally, time to talk about Android with Sameer Samat.
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Oh no, we've hit the musical interlude for Google I/O.
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Google's new scam detection tools provide real-time alerts during phone calls
A pop-up announcing a scam call.
Google just announced forthcoming scam detection tools coming to Android phones later this year, which is a good thing as these scammers keep getting better and better at parting people from their money. The toolset, revealed at Google I/O 2024, is still in the testing stages but uses AI to suss out fraudsters in the middle of a conversation.
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I agree. I experimented with using chatGPT and other AI tools to plan an itinerary last summer and it was a bit ... rough. If anything, it was more of a starting place than an actual solution, especially because several of its suggestions were straight-up hallucinations! Maybe Gemini will do better,
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Trip planning with Gemini
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Now Sissie is talking about planning a trip with Gemini, and I feel like vacations are too expensive to trust an AI to plan. It's going to take some time for people to feel comfortable with letting AI take the wheel like this.
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Gemini's app is getting a new "Live" feature that brings in the Project Astra tech we saw early in the keynote. It can speak and respond to voice commands and use your phone's camera for input.
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The tech might be there, but I really don't think humans are ready for AI co-workers. Can you even imagine people who struggle with email trying to talk to smart chatbots in Slack?
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Google's Gemini Nano brings better image-description smarts to its TalkBack vision tool
A dress is shown on screen with a description of it.
The Google I/O event is here, and the company is announcing lots of great updates for your Android device. As we heard earlier, Gemini Nano is getting multimodal support, meaning your Android will still process text but with a better understanding of other factors like sights, sounds and spoken language. Now Google has shared that the new tool is also coming to it's TalkBack feature.
TalkBack is an existing tool that reads aloud a description of an image, whether it's one you captured or from the internet. Gemini Nano's multimodal support should provide a more detailed understanding of the image.
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Sissie Hsiao at Google I/O 2024
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Chip is essentially an AI coworker.. it can analyze shared documents, schedule meetings and track projects across your company's workspace. It sounds like organizations will be able to customize their own versions of Chip to suit their needs.
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Google builds Gemini right into Android, adding contextual awareness within apps
An image of the new Gemini for Android.
Google just announced some nifty improvements to its Gemini AI chatbot for Android devices as part of the company's I/O 2024 event. The AI is now part of the Android operating system, allowing it to integrate in a more comprehensive way.
The coolest new feature wouldn't be possible without that integration with the underlying OS. Gemini is now much better at understanding context as you control apps on the smartphone. What does this mean exactly? Once the tool officially launches as part of Android 15, you'll be able to bring up a Gemini overlay that rests on top of the app you're using. This will allow for context-specific actions and queries.
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Tony Vincent at Google I/O 2024
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Android's Circle to Search can now help students solve math and physics homework
Android circle to search feature.
Google has introduced another capability for its Circle to Search feature at the company's annual I/O developer conference, and it's something that could help students better understand potentially difficult class topics. The feature will now be able to show them step-by-step instructions for a "range of physics and math word problems." They just have to activate the feature by long-pressing the home button or navigation bar and then circling the problem that's got them stumped, though some math problems will require users to be signed up for Google's experimental Search Labs feature.
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We're officially one hour into this keynote, by the way, and still no love for Android. I know there will be plenty of time for Android updates later on, but it says a lot about how far Google's priorities have shifted, it wasn't that long ago that Android was the star of I/O. Now, it feels almost like an afterthought.
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Though I guess that's sort of skipping ahead of where AI is at right now.
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But I have to wonder if this role might be better served by an AI agent that would do these same things with potentially even less manual input.
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Yea, I'm not going to lie, the ability of AI's to summarize things is nice, but it feels like the lowest rung of its capabilities. So it's good to see how things are evolving with contextual replies and carrying over data between various apps like Gmail, Calendar, etc.
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Gemini is going to power some interesting new features in the Gmail app, including summaries of long email threads. You'll also be able to chat with Gemini directly to find details from throughout your inbox. There are also new reply suggestions that can understand the context of your emails for (hopefully) more useful text suggestions. I've never been particularly impressed with Gmail's auto-suggestions but maybe Gemini will make them actually useful.
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Aparna Pappu at Google I/O
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Yea, making all this work in the real world isn't something you can just snap your fingers and voila. But down the line it almost makes me wonder if humanity's role going forward might be to just fact-check whatever army of AI agents you have at your disposal.
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Okay, this actually seems pretty useful. Search is getting video recognition capabilities so you can search based on the contents of a video, which could be particularly helpful when you need to fix something or answer a question you can't easily describe. Google will be able to understand what's in the clip and (hopefully) surface relevant results.
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Google's Gemini will search your videos to help you solve problems
Google's Gemini will search video to answer your questions
As part of its push toward adding generative AI to search, Google has introduced a new twist: video. Gemini will let you upload video that demonstrates an issue you're trying to resolve, then scour user forums and other areas of the internet to find a solution.
As an example, Google's Rose Yao talked onstage at I/O 2024 about a used turntable they bought and how they couldn't get the needle to sit on the record.
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Rose Yao at Google I/O 2024
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That does seem to be the future Google is promising us right now. It's no longer just about finding the information you need, but allowing Google's "agents" to actually complete tasks, like adding to your shopping list. I still have lots of questions about how well all this will work out in the real world.
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Google Search will now show AI-generated answers to millions by default
Google I/O
Google is shaking up Search. On Tuesday, the company announced big new AI-powered changes to the world's dominant search engine at I/O, Google's annual conference for developers. With the new features, Google is positioning Search as more than a way to simply find websites. Instead, the company wants people to use its search engine to directly get answers and help them with planning events and brainstorming ideas.
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Good point Karissa. I think Zuck has a harder uphill battle, because Facebook/Meta doesn't have the same influence on hardware like Google or Apple does. But you can see Meta trying to change that with devices like the Ray-Ban smartglasses.
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While its still super early, it does seem like we're getting closer to the computer from Star Trek, a true individualized AI entity that adjusts its behavior to each person.
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It's not just Google, either. Mark Zuckerberg has also talked a lot about the promise of "AI agents," though I think Google's path to get there is much more strightforward, as we're seeing now with this deep dive into AI overviews in search.
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Is "agent" going to be the hottest buzzword at Google I/O this year?
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It sure looks like we're going to get a full hour about AI before anyone dives deeper into Android or ChromeOS.
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Liz Reid at Google I/O 2024
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We're almost 45 minutes into this keynote and that brief mention of Circle to Search is one of the first times Sundar has said "Android" all day. Another sign that it's allllll about AI today.
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Apparently super computers aren't good enough anymore.
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Google's sixth-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is called Trillium and coming to its Cloud customers later this year. TPUs may not be the flashiest of Google's many AI updates today, but it's a crucial part of its AI work.
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Google unveils Veo and Imagen 3, its latest AI media creation models
Google IO 2024
It's all AI all the time at Google I/O! Today, Google announced its new AI media creation engines: Veo, which can produce "high-quality" 1080p videos; and Imagen 3, its latest text-to-image framework. Neither sound particularly revolutionary, but they're a way for Google to keep up the fight against OpenAI's Sora video model and Dall-E 3, a tool that has practically become synonymous with AI-generated images.
Google claims Veo has "an advanced understanding of natural language and visual semantics" to create whatever video you have in mind. The AI generated videos can last "beyond a minute." Veo is also capable of understanding cinematic and visual techniques, like the concept of a timelapse. But really, that should be table stakes for an AI video generation model, right?
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One interesting thing is Google talking more about AGI, or artificial general intelligence.
The idea of an AI having human-level intelligence once seemed like a topic strictly for science fiction, so it feels a little surreal to hear companies like Google talk about it during a dev conference.
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Keeping with that theme, Google is showing off a new video-generator called Veo. It seems Donald Glover has been an early tester of the tech. So far, these clips look surprisingly smooth and realistic. Veo is coming to "select creators" in VideoFX in the "coming weeks."
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Donald Glover using Veo to make a short film.
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Wyclef Jean testing out generative AI to help make music.
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Google I/O is a developer conference, but it's interesting that we're seeing a lot of emphasis for creative use cases of gen AI, like image and music generation.
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Google just snuck a pair of AR glasses into a Project Astra demo at I/O
Google AR glasses
In a video demonstrating the prowess of its new Project Astra app, the person demonstrating asked Gemini "do you remember where you saw my glasses?" The AI impressively responded "Yes, I do. Your glasses were on a desk near a red apple," despite said object not actually being in view when the question was asked. But these weren't your bog-standard visual aid. These glasses had a camera onboard and some sort of visual interface!
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Imagen 3 is Google's latest text-to-image generator, and it's apparently much better at creating text within images, which has been trick for many image generators.
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Doug Eck at Google I/O 2024
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Google's Project Astra uses your phone's camera and AI to find noise makers, misplaced items and more
A graphic with the words Project Astra with a series of overlapping circles in the background.
When Google first showcased its Duplex voice assistant technology at its developer conference in 2018, it was both impressive and concerning. Today, at I/O 2024, the company may be bringing up those same reactions again, this time by showing off another application of its AI smarts with something called Project Astra.
The company couldn't even wait till its keynote today to tease Project Astra, posting a video to its social media of a camera-based AI app yesterday. At its keynote today, though, Google's DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis shared that his team has "always wanted to develop universal AI agents that can be helpful in everyday life." Project Astra is the result of progress on that front.
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Not many details about Astra beyond that video, but apparently there will be a live demo of it here today, so hopefully we will get a closer look post-keynote.
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We're getting a look at something called Project Astra, part of Google's mission to create "universal AI agents." This appears to be the same thing Google briefly teased on X yesterday — it's like an AI-infused version of Google Lens, it can recognize what's in the camera's frame in real-time and answer questions even about objects out-of-frame. There also appears to be some kind of glasses component.
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Project Astra
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Google's new Gemini 1.5 Flash AI model is lighter than Gemini Pro and more accessible
Google's brand new AI model is smaller and cheaper for developers to use than Gemini 1.5 Pro
Google announced updates to its Gemini family of AI models at I/O, the company's annual conference for developers, on Tuesday. It's rolling out a new model called Gemini 1.5 Flash, which it says is optimized for speed and efficiency.
"1.5 Flash excels at summarization, chat applications, image and video captioning, data extraction from long documents and tables, and more," said Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind.
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Gemini 1.5 Flash is a new "lighter weight" Gemini model that has multimodal capabilities but is more efficient than Gemini 1.5 Pro.
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Demis Hassabis at Google I/O 2024
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Using AI to automate the process of returning something you bought.
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Sundar is back and talking about the promise of "AI agents," which can actually perform tasks on our behalf. He says they should be able to "think ahead and reason," to help us get stuff done.
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Using AI to contextualize education
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We're getting a look at Gemini 1.5 Pro in NotebookLM and how it enables voice assistant-like audio features. It essentially analyzes a bunch of source material and can explain it naturally and even answer questions.
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Josh Woodward at Google I/O 2024
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Gemini 1.5 Pro
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Ask Google Photos to get help making sense of your gallery
A graphic showing a phone with the Gemini star icon and the words
Google is inserting more of its Gemini AI into every single product it has and the next target in its sights is Photos. At its I/O developer conference today, the company's CEO Sundar Pichai announced a feature called Ask Photos, which is designed to help you find specific images in your gallery by talking to Gemini.
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Search is already one of the best features in Google Photos, but it sounds like Gemini is going to make it even more powerful. Sundar showed how it can not only search for details within specific photos but understand the broader context of several photos over time, like tracking your kid's swimming skills over a whole summer.
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Ask Photos seems like a simple little feature, but could be really useful. I'm constantly looking up stuff in Photos and I usually have to resort to remembering when I took the pic and then just scrolling through my timeline to find it.
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Google Ask Photos demo
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First up is Google Photos, Gemini is coming to Google Photos in the form of a helpful chatbot that can answer questions about what's in your gallery. "Ask Photos" is coming this summer.
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AI overviews
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I think everyone knew Google would kick things off by talking about Gemini. But I'm curious how the Google Assistant and Gemini are going to work alongside each other (or maybe not) going forward.
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Sundar Pichai at Google I/O 2024
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Sundar is on the stage, he jokes that I/O is "Google's version of the Eras tour" and says that Google is in its "Gemini era," so expect a keynote that is all things AI.
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Google I/O 2024 begins
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Two minute warning!
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Now the calm before the actual show starts. Time to grab a snack or a drink before things kick off for real.
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Welp, we got a T-shirt cannon.
t shirt cannon
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He's flinging (what I'm assuming are Google-themed) robes into the crowd with a t-shirt cannon, the crowd is amped.
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Childish Gambino has a new album out, did you know?
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Google I/O pre-show
Marc building beats in real time.
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Now Marc is taking music requests from the crowd and hes going to do his Loop Daddy thing and turn it into a full song.
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Marc Rebillet testing out some AI music samples at Google I/O 2024
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He just demonstrated some of Google's generative AI music tools, he seems to be impressed by what he heard, says there's much more to come.
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Now Marc is getting into some generative AI-made music.
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Marc Rebillet at Google I/O
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Marc Rebillet at Google I/O
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Marc Rebillet just popped up out of a life-size I/O mug and has taken over DJ duties.
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The Loop Daddy is in the house!
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The auditorium is starting to fill up! But the DJ disappeared, maybe they'll be back in a bit.
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Google I/O 2024
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We're hanging out enjoying the usual pre-keynote DJ set, it's very chill. The amphitheater is starting to fill up.
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MATCHA CROISSANT? I demand pics later, Sam. Please fuel up, you two. And you too, dear reader. Grab your drinks, snacks and maybe stay close to a bathroom?
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Google I/O stage close up
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And we're officially one hour out!
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We're in!
Google I/O 2024
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hello! I unfortunately bypassed the snacks to snag a good seat, I have a feeling I might regret that if we're in for a two-hour keynote.
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Lol, hi Cherlynn. The press tent had a very tasty matcha croissant. but I forgot to take a pic.
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Sam, Karissa — very important question from me: How are the snacks?
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Rivian R1S at Google I/O
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Google has stationed a Rivian outside the press tent, so it's a good bet we're going to get some Android Automotive updates later today.
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Just hearing some whispers that Google has a big slate of topics for today, so buckle in for a longer presentation.
I'm guessing closer to two hours than one.
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Judging by the developments over the last two years, though, this year's I/O is sure to be all about AI. Google has a ton of products across Search, Assistant, Android, Workspace, Chrome, Maps and more, all of which either have been or can be stuffed with its Gemini AI. Let's play a game: How many times will we hear the word "Gemini" today? OK maybe that's too easy. How about... "responsible AI"?
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We're still waiting to get into the amphitheater itself, that should open up in the next 10 or 25 minutes.
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It's going to me and Karissa on-site today for the keynote, so stay tuned
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Google I/O 2024
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Hey ya'll, Sam here. Just got to Shoreline a couple minutes ago.
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Being a developer conference, Google I/O is unlikely to be the launchpad for new devices anyway. But that doesn't mean the company hasn't in the past. We saw the Pixel Tablet announced at last year's show, as well as the Pixel Fold. Google also teased new AR glasses at I/O in 2022, though that wearable never became available to reviewers or the public. Thanks for joining me on this brief stroll down memory lane of I/Os past. I miss it and wish I were there! (cue Arnold voice: I'll be back.)
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In case you were wondering whether we're going to see hardware today — chances are we probably won't see new Pixel devices. Google already launched its Pixel 8a last week, and you can check out our full review of the midrange Android phone for the details. Long story short? Sam loved it and it's still our favorite sub-$500 phone!
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If you're not already caught up on what we expect to see at Google's developer conference today, you can check out our preview post for a quick refresher. Most of it won't be surprising — of course AI is likely to dominate the agenda. Stay tuned for the news here on Engadget as it breaks later this afternoon! And if you like, join myself and senior reviewer Devindra Hardawar this afternoon at about 3pm ET on Engadget's YouTube channel for a livestream to recap everything we learn today.
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Hello everyone and welcome to Engadget's liveblog of Google I/O 2024. I'm deputy editor Cherlynn Low, coming out of some sort of mental retirement to bring you the news from the show today. You'll also see photos from senior reviewer Sam Rutherford, who's at Shoreline Amphitheater with senior reporter Karissa Bell, who will doing most of the liveblogging today! I'm very jealous they get to sample Google's snacks onsite.