After Google got lots of flak for being late to AI (relative to Microsoft at least) it continues to demonstrate that it has ample opportunity with the technology. As we asserted early on in the current AI hype cycle, Google is better positioned than anyone for AI… so just give it time and see what it does.
Since then, we’ve seen Google roll out AI-based utilities and updates such as Multisearch, Conversational SERPs, Search Generative Experience (SGE) and automatically generated assets (ACA). Expect many more such infusions throughout the vast range of AI-applicable Google products.
In fact, the latest came yesterday with a barrage of AI updates at Google’s “Made by Google” Pixel 8 event. These include Bard integration in Google Assistant and Magic Editor for photos. Squinting one’s eyes, it appeared that it was an AI event rather than a Pixel 8 event. That’s the world we now live in.
Taking Inventory
To break it down and take inventory, here’s the full list of AI-related updates at the Pixel 8 event, in no particular order…
Google Assistant + Bard: From the “Didn’t that already happen?” department, Google Assistant is now Bard-enabled so it can handle a broader range of natural-language questions and more intelligent (GPT-based) answers.
Google Assistant Summaries: Google Assistant can now summarize web pages, rather than its previous ability to simply read a given page (including ads and other clutter above and below news articles). This is an early release that will need some time in the wild to prove itself… and learn.
AI Call Screening: Users can screen calls from unknown numbers through an AI that answers on their behalf with their own personalized interactive voice response (IVR) system. It essentially asks the caller questions and records their answers to be passed along to the user for final judgment.
Pixel Buds Pro: the flagship wireless earbuds now have conversation detection. Similar to Apple’s conversational awareness feature, settings like volume and noise cancellation are automatically and dynamically updated based on ambient environmental sound.
AI Photo Editing: Google’s Magic Editor tool now has a few new features including background filling, intuitive ability to erase unwanted photo elements, and a feature called Zoom Enhance (sharpen otherwise-pixelated zoomed-in photos). It’s all available on all Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
On-device AI: The Pixel 8 Pro will be the first hardware to run Google’s generative AI models on-device. This means greater performance and security. As always, expect this pro feature to trickle down to ubiquity in subsequent hardware cycles.
Long Game
Back to the assertion that Google is better positioned for AI than anyone, the part that most people miss is that it’s not late to the game… it’s been all over AI for years. Yes, it was slower than Microsoft to market the latest flavors of AI – generative and conversational AI – but that’s a narrow viewpoint.
A few examples we’d point to are Google Lens, Google Assistant, and several AI-based utilities that have been infused with core search (think: auto-complete search queries). And with respect to the “latest flavors” of AI, Google has pioneered work with Tensor and Transformer (the “T” in Chat GPT).
With that baseline, Google will stand fairly tall in AI, and we’ll see that play out through product launches and updates in the near and far future. The Pixel 8 updates, along with others made over the past few months, are just the beginning. This will be a long game that will be won over years, not weeks.
