Google I/O Keynote 2024 highlights with Gemini and AI

Google I/O 2024 shared a ton of announcements today, with Gemini and AI taking center stage.

Unlike previous Google I/O keynotes, this event didn’t involve hardware announcements or teasters. Instead, the focus was almost entirely on software, Gemini, and its other applications.

Even the next beta version of Android 15 was relegated to the next event day.

Here are some of the biggest announcements and event highlights for this year’s keynote:

AI features for Android—While Google didn’t mention features coming with Android 15, the company shared how more AI-centric features are coming to the software. For example, a wider rollout for the Circle to Search feature. In addition, an AI feature called TalkBack has been teased. It’s an accessibility tool that helps describe photos for those who are blind or have impaired eyesight.

Google Search—The search engine is getting a huge boost with new Gemini features. Get faster answers with AI Overview. You can use this to plan your next travel itinerary, along with the ability to use videos to make prompts or solve issues.

Google Workspace—Gemini is now being rolled out to Google’s other services, like Gmail. Now, it can summarize emails that are part of longer email chains. In addition, we now have a smart reply feature that allows Gemini to deliver more contextualized replies after taking time to understand your conversations.

Project Astra—the ‘AI assistant of the future’, which uses videos you capture with your phone in tandem with voice recognition to deliver contextual responses to your inquiries. A demo showcased how Project Astra helped solve a coding problem with a camera. The demo also helped an individual track down where they left their glasses from earlier that day.

Veo—This is a generative AI-powered video model that can create realistic videos at 1080p at your request. Likewise, we also have Imagen 3—which generates images based on user text prompts.

If readers are interested, feel free to watch the whole event here.