Google I/O 2024 finally started! The biggest Google conference of the year kicked off live in Mountain View, California, and streamed worldwide on YouTube. It was full of technology announcements and plans for upcoming months and years. Did you think half of the Keynote will be about AI, three-quarters? You couldn’t be more wrong! It was all about AI — the sentence “AI” was said 121 times during the presentation.
Both Keynote and Developer Keynote brought tons of interesting and innovative features.
The improvements for Gemini API make it so we can use Gemini API as it was tailored for our project. Project Astra seems to be a technology that is ahead of 2024. It’s exciting that this year Flutter took more time on the stage, especially with the announcement of stable support for compiling Flutter web with WASM and the performance boost it gives.
Here you can find some of the most interesting announcements.
AI Overviews
Google Search is getting smarter than ever before with built-in AI Overviews.
This will allow you to get better summaries for complex topics. Instead of breaking them down into multiple searches, you'll get a quick overview of the topic with useful links, saving you time on Googling and helping you further explore the subject. Additionally, the "Break it Down" feature will offer the option to simplify the answer, which is helpful when you're new to the topic.
Are you planning vacations or training sessions? Now, Google Search will also be able to plan things for you. And if you want to make any changes, no problem – the plan will adjust automatically.
Launching in the U.S. later this week, with rollout to more countries and regions coming soon.
Scam detection
Android is getting an AI-powered scam detection feature for phone calls. Using Gemini Nano, Google is testing a new feature that will present real-time alerts during a call whenever it detects scam patterns in the conversation. This security feature is implemented fully on-device, so all conversations stay private and are not being shared.
Launching later this year.
Flutter supports WASM
Web applications built using Flutter used to have a crucial problem: slow first-loading performance. Now that the compilation of Flutter Web with WASM is stable, loading times are cut in half!
Available now with Flutter 3.22.
AI Competition
Custom electric 1981 DeLorean is the grand prize in the AI Competition. All you need to do is build the best app utilizing Gemini API. Additionally, there's a $1 million prize pool for the most impactful, useful, and creative applications, along with technology-based rewards.
Ask Photos
The Photos app gains a new feature called "Ask Photos," which allows you to search within your photos using Gemini and achieve even better and more contextual results than before.
It's still in the experimental phase, with a planned rollout in the coming months that will introduce even more capabilities.
Gemini
Gemini Pro 1.5 receives a significant boost by expanding its context window from 1 million to 2 million tokens. Additionally, there have been enhancements in code generation, logical reasoning, multi-turn conversation, and audio and image understanding through advancements in data and algorithms.
Google has also introduced a new member to the Gemini model family: Gemini 1.5 Flash. This is a more efficient and faster version of Gemini, optimized for tasks where low latency and high efficiency are most important.
Gemini Nano will be a game-changer for Android users, setting the bar for on-device models even higher. With Gemini Nano, your phone will understand the world in the same way you do, not just through text input but also through sights, sounds, and spoken language.
Project Astra
Project Astra is a new, revolutionary AI agent developed by DeepMind. It's designed to be helpful and responsive in everyday life. Key features include natural conversation with quick responses and contextual understanding thanks to real-time processing and multimodal learning. This allows it to understand different types of input data.
Project Astra is under development, some of its capabilities are coming later this year.
Project IDX
Project IDX is a revolutionary cloud workspace that uses AI to supercharge your full-stack, multiplatform app development. It integrates seamlessly with your favorite Google tools and offers broad language and framework support. Project IDX helps you write better code faster, so you can bring your app ideas to life on any platform.
Live on Project IDX.
Firebase
Firebase has received several great new features. One is Firebase Genkit (currently in beta), an AI integration framework that helps you easily build AI features into your apps.
Additionally, the next generation of Firebase App Hosting is now in preview. This web hosting solution is designed specifically for modern web frameworks and automatically sets up the necessary infrastructure based on your code. You can get started right from the Firebase console.
Finally, after many years, Firebase now supports PostgreSQL databases. This coincides with the introduction of a new product, Firebase Data Connect, which utilizes Query Defined Infrastructure. This means that your database, API server, and SDKs are all generated from your data models, enabling automatic database migration, API updates, and new SDK generation.
Summary
AI was the star of the Google I/O 2024's Keynote. The velocity of improvements and new features introduced for Gemini is impressive, showcasing the true power of AI and its growing impact on technology and our lives. Google unveiled Project Astra, a revolutionary AI assistant with natural conversation capabilities. It's encouraging to see Google prioritizing features like scam detection, which can bolster our daily security. On top of that, tons of improvements are coming to existing apps and tools. Not all of them are mentioned above. Overall, the Keynote highlighted Google's commitment to AI-driven innovation across various domains, promising enhanced user experiences and developer tools. This focus on AI sets the stage for an exciting remainder of the conference.
[All images source: Google YouTube Channel]
