Just yesterday I was talking about Apple’s new features. AI-powered transcription and summarization features Voice Memos on iPhone is one of the features promised by Rabbit. R1 Now you have one less reason to buy a device for later this year.
Today is Google I/O, the company showed off Project Astra, a multimodal AI agent designed to help you. They are supposed to receive audio, photo, and video input and accurately respond to queries and follow-up questions. The company claims that its real USP lies in its ability to operate in real-time and “reduce response times to conversational levels.”
The keynote speech showed a woman walking around the workplace and asking her Google smartphone to identify certain parts of the speaker. The phone immediately recognized it correctly as a tweeter. The woman asked many other questions and even asked him to tell her where he last saw her misplaced glasses.
Google touted the whole “Just Ask” feature multiple times during the keynote. They are trying to sell a new Gemini AI feature that will give you everything you need without asking for anything. Another new addition is a side panel feature that appears in Gmail and Google Docs to help you save time using these services. Summarize a long email thread, convey the key points of an hour-long presentation, or summarize a PDF.
In the presentation, an example of a side panel user asked to analyze all receipts in an email sent within the past 30 days and write some of their contents (vendor, date, etc.) into a spreadsheet. was shown. The keynote speaker mentioned that this action can be fully automated to update spreadsheets alongside Gmail. This is one of his biggest promises for the R1 for late 2024 and is the feature R1 has been most vocal about.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. As soon as mobile phones become smart enough to provide the same functionality, dedicated AI devices will become virtually useless (which will happen sooner than we think).
