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Google is entering its era of AI agents with the introduction of Gemini 2.0 — the company’s next-generation AI chatbot — and the limited edition Project Astra, an AI agent powered by computer vision that can see and analyze the world around you, the company said in a press release Wednesday.
The Astra project, which was shown at Google I/O earlier this yearrepresents a major leap forward in Google’s AI research from its DeepMind team in London. As a video from earlier this year showed, Project Astra, which can work through your phone’s camera or camera-equipped glasses, can see and analyze the world around you and respond to anything it recognizes. This includes being able to ask your glasses where the bus is going, what your apartment complex code is, or where you left your book.
Google says its latest improvements with Astra include better dialog and cross-language convertibility, deeper integration with Google Lens and Maps, up to 10 minutes of memory, and better latency for faster responses.
Project Astra will first have people in its Verified Tester program. No time frame was given for when it might go public.
Project Astra’s eye capabilities are sure to raise privacy concerns. Google said it was working with its Accountability and Safety Committee, the company’s interview review group, to flag potential risks. This includes flags that prevent users from inadvertently sharing sensitive information with agents and controls so that users can delete sessions.
Google’s latest wave of announcements comes as a major one Advances in artificial intelligence have slowed and investments on Wall Street have softened. At the same time, OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, are announcing newer, more advanced models and raising billions of dollars of investment. It’s a race between Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI to see which Big Tech giant will lead the AI race. Some analysts believe that the development of artificial intelligence will be a a winner takes all racewith the best technology leading the market. Microsoft has already spent 19 billion dollarsand DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says Google will spend $100 billion on AI. The AI market is expected to be valued at $1.8 trillion by 2030, according to the report Grand View Research.
Gemini, Project Mariner leads other announcements
While Project Astra certainly ignites the imagination of what’s possible with this all-seeing AI technology, Gemini is also getting a major update. Gemini 2.0 will have advanced reasoning capabilities with better answers across the board, from general queries to coding questions and even math, according to Google. The company says Gemini 2.0 also runs faster than previous versions. An early experimental version of Gemini 2.0 will be given to developers before it is released to the general public.
Luckily, starting Wednesday, fans can play with the chat version of Gemini 2.0 Flash through the Gemini app on their phones. Gemini 2.0 Flash is a lighter version of Gemini 2.0. Google says Gemini 2.0 will roll out to more Google products early next year.
In addition to the news about Project Astra and Gemini 2.0, Google also unveiled Project Mariner, a prototype Chrome extension that can help with more complex tasks. Currently limited to Chrome for trusted testers, it can analyze text, images, graphs and other web elements at the pixel level and use that information to perform complex tasks. Google is still working on Mariner and admits the technology isn’t always accurate and is slow to complete tasks.
Google engineers are also working on ways for AI to help your games. In partnership with Supercell, creator of Clash of Clans and Brawl Stars, Google is working on an artificial intelligence that can answer questions about the games you play, like what you need to do to beat a boss. Google hasn’t revealed how its AI will be able to deliver this information. Is it based on information received from the game developers? Or is Google absorbing information from game guides published online?
Google also announced Jules, another AI agent the company is working on to help with coding. Jules integrates with the GitHub workflow.
For more on AI, see OpenAI Sora Turbo announcement and Google’s new quantum AI chip.
