Beyond Tomorrow: xAI launches Grok-2, Google Launches Pixel 9 With Gemini AI— Weekly AI Roundup

While OpenAI had been talking up its Advanced Voice Mode over the past couple of months, Google was quietly working in the background. We got to see the results this week with the release of the Pixel 9 series of phones, which are all AI-enabled with Gemini Live.

Google positions Gemini Live as a "mobile conversational experience" that lets people have "free-flowing conversations" with the LLM. What's even better is the fact that Google just up and released it to users with the announcement. Meanwhile, OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode is still languishing in Alpha and only available to select users.

Still, Google's track record with their AI products hasn't exactly been the most stellar or stable. For those keeping count back at home, it's 0-3. Gemini's predecessor, Bard, was prone to providing incorrect or false information. Then, there was Gemini creating black Nazis. And most recently, AI Overviews, which was prone to suggesting people put rocks in their spaghetti.

But Gemini Live seems like it has the potential to change how people view Google's AI products. It currently comes with a range of 10 voices for users to pick from, versus OpenAI's three. Google claims that you can interrupt Gemini Live, similar to how you'd have a conversation with someone.

Additionally, users will be able to integrate Gemini Live across a suite of Google products to make day-to-day tasks easier, but the extensions will be rolled out over the coming weeks.

Gemini Live has already started rolling out to Gemini Advanced subscribers at the time of this article.

Other features coming with the Pixel 9 include the Add Me feature, Pixel Studio, and a new feature called Call Notes. Here's a quick breakdown of what each of them does:

Add Me: Using augmented reality and AI, users will now be able to add people missing in a photograph to the frame. Which is pretty cool, until you start thinking about all the ways people are likely to misuse it.

Pixel Studio: Users will have access to Google DeepMind’s text-to-image model Imagen 3 to create images that they'd like to create. The technology itself will be on the cloud and not on the phone itself.

Call Notes: This one is controversial, to say the least. Google will basically save a "private summary" of your conversation with a person after a phone call. It's surprising what all of us are willing to give up in the name of convenience. The company says that the feature runs fully on-device and the other person on the call will also be notified. Take that as you will from the company that quietly changed its motto from "Don’t be evil" to "Do the right thing."