We're bringing you news from the company's developer conference as it unfolds.
cherlynn low
Deputy Editor, Reviews
Updated
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!
LIVE COVERAGE IS OVER129 updates
Gemini will be accessible in the side panel on Google apps like Gmail and Docs
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.
Read the full story here.
Sam Rutherford
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?
Cherlynn Low
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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Karissa Bell
And that's a wrap on the keynote, it was *just* under 2 hours of all things Gemini and AI.
Sam Rutherford
Karissa Bell
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.
Sam Rutherford
Karissa Bell
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).
Sam Rutherford
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.
Karissa Bell
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.
Sam Rutherford
Sam Rutherford
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.
Karissa Bell
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.
Sam Rutherford
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.
Google Gemini can power a virtual AI teammate with its own Workspace account
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.
Read the full story here.
Sam Rutherford
Josh Woodward is back to talk about various Gemini models available to developers.
Karissa Bell
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.
Sam Rutherford
Sam Rutherford
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.
Sam Rutherford
Karissa, I think Circle to Search supporting formulas is weird because for older types like us (or at least me), it feels like cheating.
