Google’s yearly I/O developer conference started at 10am on the 10th of May, 2023, which was 3am on the 11th of May for those of us on the east coast of Australia – and as with virtually all of the major tech keynotes each year, this one is absolutely must watch, especially given the influx of everything AI that Google is infusing into its products and services this year.
Now, I do have the full 2 hour keynote below, and a little bit further down, I will embed one of the shortened versions of the keynote that one of the other media companies out there, if you’re short on time, but I always do recommend you watch the full version.
Also – I will be reviewing the new Pixel 7a smartphone, which is US $499 and AUD $749, and which is the most powerful a-series Pixel yet, and definitely worth considering if you’re looking for a what is effectively a premium Android smartphone at a price well under $1000. It is available now.
There’s also the Pixel Tablet, which is US $499 and AUD $899, and which is Google’s first Pixel tablet. It arrives next month but can be pre-order now, and has some cool features we’ll go into in a future article.
Finally, there’s the Google Pixel Fold – the first Folding smartphone tablet from Google, much like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, expect this model doesn’t support a stylus, unlike Samsung’s Fold series.
- Ok, let’s start with the Google I/O keynote, which I really do recommend watching!
2. The Google I/O 2023 keynote was held this morning in Mountain View, California, and as expected, Google announced a raft of impressive AI enhancements, opening Google Bard up to 180 countries, and launching some impressive new hardware – let’s start with Google’s statement about responsible AI:
Google explained it is now seven years into its journey as an AI-first company, a statement meant to remind us that Google has been very responsible with its rollout of artificial intelligence, which is something that Google highlighted many times during the two hour keynote.
This comes as no surprise, given one of its top AI leaders, Geoffrey Hinton, known as the Godfaterh of AI, quit Google late last month citing major concerns over the safety, reliability and trustworthiness of AI, but Google says it has a single goal: to make AI even more helpful for everyone – people, businesses, and communities.
Google also announced that text and images generated by AI will be marked in metadata or watermarks as being generated by AI, to enhance trust so that people can’t pass off AI generated work as their own.
It’s also important to note Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has a full blog post here with all the details, too.
3. And what did Google say about Google Bard, its ChatGPT competitor? It has been available in the US from the start with a waitlist, so what’s the news there?
Google Bard has had the waitlist removed, as is now available in 180 countries, including Australia, can work with images, and it can do everything ChatGPT can do, with support for plug-ins from other companies and apps coming soon, so you can use Adobe’s smarts to create images, for example. Tons more detail from Google is here in its separate blog post.
- What about the “large language model” that Google and other AI companies use as the brains of these chatbots?
Google also announced an update to its Large Language Model, called PaLM 2, and this is the database of information used to generate intelligent responses to just about any question. PaLM2 comes in four sizes, with one small enough to run on a mobile phone, with all the models featuring improved multilingual, reasoning, and coding capabilities. There’s also Med-PaLM 2, trained by Google’s health research teams with medical knowledge, can answer questions and summarise insights from a variety of dense medical texts.
Sounds like an “offline version” of the HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can finally come true!
- What about changes to the traditional Google search we’re all used to?
Google’s search results will not only start to show you answers generated by “generative AI” at the top of results, if you switch on its experimental mode in the Google Labs website, and it’s smart enough to suggest questions and prompts that help you unlock entirely new types of questions you never thought Search could answer, and transform the way information is organised, to help you sort through and make sense of what’s out there.
Plenty more information on the new Google Search experience here – and here’s a video Google prepared earlier – the article continues below:
- What about Google Maps?
Google has been reinventing maps over the past year, making it more visual with features like search with Live View and Immersive View for places. In th keynote, Google showed off a new with Immersive View for routes feature, where you can visualise every segment of a route before you go almost like watching a live video you can watch live or forward through at will — whether you’re driving, walking or cycling, and you can see expected traffic, weather and more.
- What’s coming to the Google office suite and Gmail?
Naturally, Google showed off how generative AI can write emails for you, documents, spreadsheets and presentations, able to generate drafts anywhere from simple and concise, through to surprisingly detailed and creative.
Based on a simple prompt, Gmail can look at an email you’ve received and write a response, it can suggest images for your presentation, it can create tables of information to put into Google Sheets, and more – it’s all coming later this year, but whether you’re using Google’s office suite, or Microsoft’s, you’ll really be able to take advantage of a lot of the grunt work being done for you, polish work you’ve already done and more.
- Google Brings Magic Eraser to Google Photos, and Magic Editor is coming too
If you store your photos on the Google Photos app and website, you’ll soon be able to use the magic eraser feature there, so you can remove other people from that beach photo, or remove anything and have Google automagically fill in the background.
Another feature called Magic Editor will come later in the year, so you can move people and items around in photos, brighten elements and more and have the lighting of the photo change accordingly. There was a demo where a child was with a bunch of balloons, but part of the balloons were cut off. With magic editor, you could move your child with photos into the centre of the photo, and Google’s magic editor filled in the rest of the missing photos perfectly.
Here is Engadget’s cut down version of the keynote in 18 minutes – the article continues below:
9. And the new Google phones and tablets?
Google’s new Pixel 7a smartphone is $499 in the US and $749 in Australia, and it’s almost as good as the Pixel 7 phone this year. It has a 64 megapixel main camera on the back, although the sensor size is smaller than the 50 megapixel cameras in the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro.
You can see all the details at the Google Store (Australian edition) and this should take you to the US version (with US prices, obviously)( of the store where you’ll see the Pixel Fold, which isn’t available in Australia (as yet).
It has the same chip as its bigger brothers, has 3 years on Android updates and 5 years of security updates, and while there are phones at half the price, Google’s Tensor G2 chip is a premium high-end chip compared with the mid-range phones.
Google also launched a tablet which starts at $499 in the US, and $899 in Australia, with the same Tensor G2 chip, and it comes with a charging and speaker stand so it is always charged, can be used as a smart home speaker with screen, a way to control your smart home, and with Google updating 50 of its own apps to support large screens, Google’s ambitions in the tablet space are finally solid, 13 years after Apple launched the iPad.
Finally, Google introduce the Pixel Fold phone, Google’s first folding phone. It looks similar to the Galaxy Fold, but isn’t so tall, so the front screen is wide that the Samsung Fold and the internal screen is more square,
There’s still a crease which did look quite visible – the tech boffins haven’t figured out how to eliminate it yet – and Google did show off how you can have two apps running side by side, or a list of email on the left, and the email body on the right – as well as showing how you could use the live translator to show what you’re saying in the language you’re translating to on the screen facing the other speaker, while the inside tablet screen you’re looking at shows you what you’re saying and the translation as well.
Unfortunately though, the Fold isn’t coming to Australia, or at least, not yet. Its price starts at US $1799, which is probably closer to AUD $3000, and unlike Samsung, the Pixel Fold doesn’t come with and isn’t compatible with a stylus, even though the larger Pixel Tablet is stylus compatible.
10. Android 14
Here’s CNET edit of what’s new in Android 14, coming later this year
