Coming in Pixel 9 smartphone lineup and Pixel 9 Pro Foldable Probably. Immerse yourself in AI featuresAmong the Magic Editor and other esoteric features of Gemini, the AI feature that stands out is an app that just stores screenshots. Pixel Screenshots is an app for Google’s smartphones that can search for screenshots with the help of AI. Seeing it in action, this is Microsoft’s infamous recall featureand it’s all good stuff.
My screenshots are like barnacles all over my organized Google Photos app. I save every event, note, receipt, or anything I need to remember in my screenshots. I could delete them from Photos, but then I might miss something I need later. Pixel Screenshots solves this problem by giving you a dedicated app to search your screenshots. The feature uses the Gemini Nano to identify text in the app and understand images. Ask it to search how much your friends’ drinks cost last night and it should be able to pull up that information.
Google told Gizmodo that the entire process works on-device, with no cloud-based effort required. Every time you take a screenshot, the app generates a title and summary for the image. You can also add notes to your screenshots to make your content more discoverable through AI-enhanced search. Best of all, you can create categories for your different screenshots.
What’s the difference between a Pixel screenshot and a Microsoft recall?
Microsoft Recall details for First wave of Copilot+ PCs Earlier this year, privacy-conscious consumers raised concerns, some of whom were initially hesitant to buy a PC that would take screenshots of everything they did on their computer, including passwords and financial information, every few seconds and store them on a drive. Microsoft This feature was removed from the initial release. Researchers discontinued Copilot+ after discovering that screenshots were easily accessible without any real layer of security.
Both Google and Microsoft claim that all AI screenshot analysis, whether it’s Recall or Pixel Screenshots, happens on-device. Google’s advantage is that users can choose what and when they take screenshots. It also works with other Google apps. If it finds that your screenshot contains a date or location, it can add the location to Maps or an event to your calendar with the press of a button.
Recall is supposed to be an always-on memory machine for when you forget what you were searching for the other day. But the feature automatically eats up a significant chunk of your storage to fill it up with junk screenshots. Microsoft promises that the feature won’t be enabled by default once it’s finally rolled out to Copilot+, but I’m still hesitant to allow it for fear of sensitive information being picked up while I’m scrolling.
On Pixel phones, screenshots are stored in Google Photos, at least for now. My photos are for the experience, and the screenshots are for my benefit as a tech reporter, so I like to keep them separate if possible. We need to use the app more ourselves to give a full impression, but for now, this is one feature that makes much better use of AI than boring AI-generated text or clunky, empty AI art.
