Attending Google’s I/O developer conference is like being doused with a firehose of new AI announcements.
At I/O’s keynote event on Tuesday, Business Insider counted at least two dozen new models, features, and updates.
“We are shipping faster than ever,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai boasted onstage.
Indeed. But it’s starting to get a little confusing. For one, some of the launches seem to overlap with each other. Launching so many AI products in such a short timeframe is impressive, and it can also feel scatterbrained.
AI Mode allows you to chat with Google as you browse the web, creating a more conversational search experience. Don’t confuse it with Gemini in Chrome, which allows you to ask Gemini questions while you browse.
With Gemini Live, you can point your phone at whatever you want and talk to the AI assistant about it. Don’t mistake it for Search Live, which allows you to chat with Search about whatever your phone sees.
Project Mariner is an experimental AI agent that can take actions like booking tickets. Gemini’s upcoming Agent Mode also has agentic capabilities, like helping users find just the right Zillow listing.
Not all the new tools seemed that similar. Google launched an impressive new AI filmmaking tool called Flow, powered by its new model Veo 3.
Google also touted updates to an entirely separate AI model family from Gemini called Gemma which, incidentally, can help decipher how dolphins talk to each other — that’s DolphinGemma.
Multiple Googlers that Business Insider spoke with at I/O used a single word to describe Google’s current rate of shipping: “intense.”
Google’s approach complicates its own vision of building a single, universal AI assistant. (That mission has its own name, too: Project Astra.)
OpenAI is also moving fast towards this goal and appears intent on launching a dedicated device to run it, given its recent purchase of Apple designer Jony Ive’s hardware startup.
Google risks building so many overlapping AI products that it will be tough to compete with a single, more stand-alone solution, such as an AI-native phone.
No one’s counting Google out, though. The tech giant has become an undeniable AI leader, inventing much of the core research behind the current boom and successfully launching transformational technology like Waymo. Time will tell whether Google’s more sprawling approach wins out.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
