Google I/O was an AI evolution, not a revolution
At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company made its case to developers — and to some extent, consumers — why its bets on AI are ahead of rivals. At the event, the company unveiled a revamped AI-powered search engine, an AI model with an expanded context window of 2 million tokens, AI helpers across its suite of Workspace apps, like Gmail, Drive and Docs, tools to integrate its AI into developers’ apps and even a future vision for AI, codenamed Project Astra, which can respond to sight, sounds, voice and text combined. While each advance on its own was promising, the onslaught of AI news was overwhelming. Though obviously aimed at developers, these big events are also an opportunity to wow end users about the technology. But after the flood of news, even somewhat tech-savvy consumers may be asking themselves, wait, what’s Astra again? Is it the thing powering Gemini Live? Is Gemini Live sort of like Google Lens? How is it different from Gemini Flash? Is Google actually making AI ...