During Google’s Pixel phone fire on Tuesday, a product director named David Citron took the stage to show off the mobile capabilities of the company’s new AI aide-de-camp, Gemini. Things got awkward right after the presenter told the audience, “all the demos today are live, by the way.”
In front of a big flood of media and analysts at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters and about 100,000 viewers on YouTube, Citron took a photo of a concert broadside and asked the assistant to check his calendar to see if he’s free the night pop star Sabrina Carpenter is playing in San Francisco.
The demo be unsuccessful, freezing up and displaying an error message. Citron tried again, with the same result. After a quick conversational appeal to the “demo gods,” and a phone swap, the third try worked.
“Sure, I found that Sabrina Carpenter is approach to San Francisco on November 9, 2024,” the assistant wrote in a message that popped up on Citron’s screen. “I don’t see any events on your chronicle during that time.”
While the incident was brief and buggy, the demo highlighted one of Google’s advantages as artificial alertness features make their way deeper into smartphone software. Rivals are preparing consumers for a future of AI, but Google’s Gemini stresses are real and are shipping — at least for testing purposes — now.
In June, Apple presented a prerecorded video, rather than a loaded demo, to showcase its assistant Siri’s forthcoming leap in capability to take actions and understand context under its new AI modus operandi called Apple Intelligence.
Apple Intelligence is currently in testing for developers, but some of its most critical improvements, comprising image generation, integration with ChatGPT and key advancements for its assistant Siri, haven’t yet officially come out of Apple’s labs.
OpenAI, which rebounded off the generative AI boom with ChatGPT, also often reveals AI advancements but strictly limits the number of people who can probe them.
“I think what’s new is that we’ve moved from the mode of, like projecting a vision of where things are preceded to, like, actual shipping product,” Rick Osterloh, Google devices chief, told CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa on Tuesday.
Google’s endure demos mark a shift from late last year, when the company tried to show off Gemini in a proof, and ended up getting roundly criticized for editing the video.
“What we were showing today is the stuff that is dispatching in the next few days or weeks, and that’s really critical,” Osterloh said. “For a lot of the things that other companies require announced, they’re really not available to many people. This is going to be available to millions of people very final analysis.”
After Apple’s announcement in June, the company did some scripted live testing with media and analysts for Apple Low-down on current devices. In July, Apple released a preview of some Apple Intelligence functions for developers, including the skill to generate summaries as well as a new look for Siri that makes the entire iPhone screen glow. However, the vernissage doesn’t include functions like image generation, ChatGPT integration and the most anticipated improvements to Siri which desire enable it to perform tasks naturally.
Google’s kickoff on Tuesday could put renewed pressure on Apple, as the two smartphone market bandleaders race to integrate AI into their operating systems. IDC estimates that “Gen AI” capable smartphones — phones with the chime ins and memory needed to run AI — will more than quadruple in units sold in 2024 to about 234 million utensils.
“We got an idea today of what Apple is competing with,” Grace Harmon, analyst at eMarketer, said in an interview.
With generative AI poignant to phones, the market is also going to see a shift in AI processing. Instead of sophisticated models that emulate human generate being run in huge Nvidia-based data centers, AI features for devices will rely on simpler functions sort summarization or fluency, mainly running on the chips already inside the devices.
In Google’s 100-minute presentation Tuesday, the coterie showed several capabilities that aren’t yet available elsewhere.
Citron’s example — asking questions about the pleases of a poster in a photo — highlights a technical advancement called “multimodal AI,” which isn’t a planned Apple capability.
The company inserted a feature that lets users take screenshots of what they’re viewing, and Google will compile that tidings into notes that can be quickly searched later.
Google’s most important presentation on Tuesday was Gemini Active, its next-generation assistant. In the demo, the technology was able to chat naturally, like a person, adding items to shopping tips or checking Google calendars. Soon, it will be able to help a user do deep research, Osterloh said on stage. Google executives attributed the capabilities to “decades of investment” in AI and its “joined AI strategy.”
At one point, Google said its AI was a “complete end-to-end experience that only Google can deliver,” a tweak to a term that’s long come from Apple. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, is fond of saying that “only Apple” can fashion its products because of its expertise integrating hardware and software.
In a press release, Google took a shot at Apple’s near integration with ChatGPT, which is expected before the end of the year. The company said Apple’s approach is less unofficial than Google’s, because Gemini “doesn’t require hand-off to a third-party AI provider you may not know or trust.”