Today’s Made By Google Event was Android’s last, best chance to up its AI game before Apple Intelligence comes out this fall. Google already had its big AI event earlier this year, but after a somewhat underwhelming response, all eyes were on the Pixel 9 launch to up the game.
Today’s new AI features aren’t anything groundbreaking, but given that Apple Intelligence will reportedly be holding AI-powered Siri and some of its own innovations for next year, they might be enough to keep the race neck-and-neck for the time being.
Add Me
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt
My personal favorite AI addition to the Pixel 9 is Add Me, a photo feature that finally lets everyone in your group be in on the shot. The idea is to take a photo, then swap out the person holding the camera and take another. Add Me will then intelligently combine both photos to make it look like the original photographer was there all along.
It’s simple, it makes sense, and it does something you couldn’t just do on your own. It also lets you use your rear cameras for group shots rather than trying to squeeze everyone in on the selfie cam, giving you more powerful lenses and more room to work with. It’s looking to be an all-around improvement for trip photos or fun nights out, and I could see myself and my fiancé using it a lot on our upcoming honeymoon.
Screenshots
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt
Another strong example of AI on the Pixel 9 is the new Screenshots app. This uses Gemini Nano to sort through all your screenshots and add AI titles and descriptions to them, so you can more easily search through and categorize them in the future. For instance, say you take a screenshot of your concert tickets but are having trouble finding them a few months down the line, when it’s time to actually head out. Screenshots would label the screenshot for you, so you could just search “concert tickets” and find it with ease. It could also pull info from the photo itself, letting you know where the venue is or where your seats are.
It’s another example of AI as utility, automatically adding extra usefulness to your phone that isn’t easily written off as a novelty. Google says Screenshots runs entirely on your phone using Gemini Nano, so you don’t have to worry about your private info heading to the cloud.
Pixel Studio
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt
Like Apple’s Image Playground on its own devices, Google Pixels are getting their own AI image generator. Called Pixel Studio, it lets users pick an art style and enter a prompt to get some custom imagery.
It’s not quite as robust as Apple’s option, as you can’t quickly make emoji or stickers for your messaging app, but you can import photos to use in AI-generated imagery, or cut out parts of one generated image to paste into another. There’s also plenty of text options.
Similarly, you can also use Pixel Studio without any AI at all, letting you quickly mark up or mash up your own photos.
Pixel Studio uses a combination of cloud and on-device AI, depending on your task, so do keep that in mind when bringing any photos with sensitive info into the app.
A new weather app
Google also announced its new Pixel Weather app today, and while it mostly focuses on displaying your forecast and details like wind speed or humidity, there is a small AI inclusion worth mentioning. If you’re like me, you don’t want to spend more than a minute looking at the forecast—I pretty much just glance at it to know what to wear and if I should bring an umbrella with me. For folks like us, Gemini will be able to read the data in your weather app and summarize it for you.
Call Notes
Maybe the most direct comparison to Apple Intelligence in today’s announcements was Call Notes, which will use AI to create transcripts and summaries of your phone calls. This is private and runs natively, and the person you’re calling will be notified when you turn it on.
With its addition of AI summaries, Call Notes actually improves on what’s been pitched by Apple, so it’ll be interesting to see how the iPhone maker responds.
Improvements to existing features
Aside from new AI features, Google is committing to improving the AI already on its phones.
This is maybe most noticeable in Magic Editor, which is getting a new Auto Frame feature that can reframe your photos for maximum effect, as well as use generative fill to help add on to them when needed. Google says it’s trained the feature on the rule of thirds and the golden ratio, so hopefully it knows what it’s doing. If not, you can always use the new “reimagine” feature instead to add an AI-generated background to your photo.
Staying in the realm of photography, an updated panorama mode will more closely guide you through your panorama-taking process. You’ll also be able to use Night Sight for panoramas, which lets you send your photos to the cloud to be touched up for brightness and visibility.
Similarly, Pixel Pro phones with video boost will get faster video rendering, will be able to shoot high-resolution videos up to a 20x zoom, will have HDR+ applied across the entire zoom range, and will get access to AI upscaling up to 8K.
Outside of photos, Google’s Clear Calling, which reduces background noise in phone calls, is getting general enhancements for narrowband calls over LTE.
Android’s Gemini assistant is also getting some adjustments, letting you talk to it conversationally via “Gemini Live,” which is coming first in English to Gemini Advanced subscribers. According to Google, you’ll be able to talk to the bot in a natural voice and hear back from it in one of several customizable voices. It worked well enough in a live stage demo, but there was a moment where it interrupted the host showing it off. In the future, Google also promises to add video input to Gemini Live, as shown on Project Astra at Google I/O earlier this year.
There’s a bit more for Gemini, like a “magic list” feature that will generate lists for you based on prompts (it might list out all the needed ingredients for a “taco night dinner for family of four,” for example). Google is also promising general improvements to the Gemini Assistant’s understanding, accuracy, and integration with workspace apps.
You can experience all of Gemini yourself when you get a Pixel 9 Pro, Nano or not. That’s thanks to the free year of Gemini Advanced Google is throwing in with all Pixel 9 purchases.
And that’s it for new AI on Google’s Pixel devices. As predicted, it’s not quite an AI revolution, and the company hasn’t been entirely clear about when and if all of the new features will get backported to older phones. But maybe slow and steady is the right approach now, as the AI bubble finally starts bursting.
