Tag: ai

Everything new coming to Meta’s AI agent Muse

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Meta’s personal AI agent Muse is only a few weeks old, and the social networking giant isn’t wasting any time building out what may be its biggest bet on consumer AI to date. 

CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the company’s annual Connect event in Menlo Park on Wednesday with a keynote that made one thing clear: Meta is going all-in on Muse. 

The Muse agent (the physical avatar is named Jolly, according to Zuckerberg) is designed to handle everyday tasks by connecting to users’ apps and services, including email and calendars. At Connect, Zuckerberg introduced a slew of new capabilities and integrations to make Muse more useful and more deeply woven into users’ daily lives. Muse will be everywhere, if the user chooses, including on their Meta AI glasses. 

Muse, which launched in early September, interacts across a user’s devices and digital accounts. The agent is powered by Muse Spark, Meta’s multimodal AI model built for agentic work. Meta has touted it as a more accessible agent than those offered by competitors — an AI helper that, from the jump, allows users to automate the busy work in their lives. 

“The centerpiece of our vision for what we’re building is Muse,” Zuckerberg said as he kicked off a keynote donning khakis and a black T-shirt with the words “Building is My love Language” emblazoned across the front. “In the coming years, I expect that Muse is going to grow into the personal superintelligence that billions of people around the world are going to use to accomplish their goals and improve their lives.”

Zuckerberg also believes that Muse will make money for its users — and of course, eventually for Meta.

“We’re standing behind this by making Muse free for a huge number of tokens, with the expectation that over time we will profit by taking a small fee from transactions,” he said.

Here are the new features and capabilities that got our attention …

Muse gets its own digital avatar

Image Credits:Meta/screenshot /

One of the more fun announcements made Wednesday is that Muse users will soon have the ability to conjure a distinct digital avatar for their particular agent and then video chat with it in real time. A new AI model, Muse Realtime Avatar, has been developed to power the particular feature, the company says.

The idea is that Meta’s previously faceless AI software will be given a face, body, and voice, making them significantly more personable. There’s certainly a hint of Metaverse-ishness to this feature, which was demoed on stage at Connect. Users will be able to have live conversations with this avatar, giving it tasks and asking it questions. 

Muse will also be integrated with Meta’s smart glasses line, the company announced. This means that users will be able to communicate with their agent merely by speaking to their glasses. The agent activates via a wake word, the company said, adding that it will be able to guide users through a personalized workout, log meals, book an appointment, and help them buy products they see. 

Meta said Muse will work in the background and check back in when it’s done.

It’s not clear exactly when this feature will become available, although Meta says that it should launch sometime in “the coming months.” 

Soon, you’ll be able to let Muse run your Mac

Image Credits:Meta/screenshot /

Meta says it is bringing Muse computer work to Mac. The company had previously talked about Muse coming to Mac, and spent more time on Wednesday providing a few new details. This means that users will be able to delegate tasks to the agent, and — much like other popular AI agents from OpenAI and Anthropic — Muse will be able to operate any app on a user’s desktop.

“You can have it help you run your small business, or just get work done for you,” Meta’s chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said Wednesday during the keynote. “You can walk away from your computer and it keeps working for you on all the jobs you lined up.”

Muse will get its own email address

Since Muse will always be working in the background, it will naturally need its own email address. Meta’s Wang announced it is developing that feature and will make it available “soon,” without providing a more precise timeline.

Users will also be able to add Muse to an email thread or forward emails from the agent to handle on their behalf.

Meta has locked in partnerships with companies like Stripe and Shopify, illustrating that the company sees Muse as an important tool for shopping.

Muse can access the entire Shopify product catalog agentically and use Lync and now Shop Pay to buy almost anything on the internet, according to Wang, who noted that Meta has also added more support for payments with PayPal.

The company also announced a string of new partnerships with retailers, including Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Walmart, and Wayfair. Muse will be able to connect with these retail apps as well as with Expedia and soon, Instacart. Other connectors include GitHub, Granola, and Notion.

Wang noted that the company wants Muse to connect with small business too. Meta recently opened its platform to allow developers to build their own “connectors.” The company received more than 1,500 applications in less than week, he said, adding “I think this could be a generational opportunity to start building for a new platform as it takes off, and the response so far has been really great.”

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Apple CEO John Ternus says the best AI device is still the iPhone

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Apple’s new CEO John Ternus used the opening of the company’s Surprise and Shine event Wednesday to make its AI strategy clear: the iPhone is already the best AI device out there, and Apple cares more about data privacy than its rivals.

The comments come as Ternus takes the reins at Apple from Tim Cook, who is now executive chairman, and offer a clear picture of how the company plans to compete in the AI era. Instead of building new hardware for AI, Apple wants to make the iPhone the central way consumers interact with the new technology.

During his introduction at the Cupertino event, Ternus described the ideal AI device, or “intelligent personal hub,” as he called it. He said such a hub would have a broad understanding of a user’s personal context, always be with them, and have both a powerful processor capable of running AI models on-device and an internet connection to access models in the cloud.

The device would also have a large display, high-quality cameras and microphones so it could see and hear the world around it, along with long battery life, Ternus continued.

Plus, “you’d want it to be super easy to use without a big learning curve. And finally, you’d want it to work seamlessly with your other devices, apps, and services, so it feels like one integrated experience,” he said.

“In other words, you would arrive at something remarkably familiar, because there’s no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone,” Ternus said.

Ternus also emphasized how Apple cares more about data privacy, adding that “others see [users’ personal] data as something to collect and store.” It was one of the sharper statements Apple has made about how it intends to differentiate its AI platform from the competition.

“…Honestly, trust only goes so far when your data is no longer yours to control; that’s why Apple Intelligence runs on device whenever it can,” Ternus concluded.

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Hearing tech startup Legato emerges from stealth with $12M and a peek at its AI hearing glasses

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Hearing loss affects an estimated 50 million adults in the United States, but only around 20% of those with diagnosed hearing loss seek treatment. Legato, a new hearing tech company, aims to close that gap. 

The startup is emerging from stealth on Wednesday with $12 million in funding and a first look at its AI hearing glasses, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. The glasses, called Legato Frames, integrate the company’s patented hearing-assistance technology into the arms of eyewear frames. Legato Frames are expected to launch later this fall.

Legato was founded by Mehul Trivedi and Steve Romine, who bring extensive experience in wearables and hearing care from Bose, where Trivedi led the creation of Bose Frames and Romine ran the hearing aids division. Trivedi left Bose to work at EssilorLuxottica, where he led smart eyewear efforts and worked on the Meta Ray-Bans, while Romine went on to serve as COO of hearing care company Audicus.

After spending years at larger companies, Trivedi took some time off to explore the intersection of hearing technology and smart eyewear. During that time, Trivedi came across technology he believed could bring the two together, so he contacted Romine and the pair founded Legato in late 2024.

Image Credits:Legato /

“Our goal is to make hearing as ubiquitous as vision,” Trivedi said in an interview with TechCrunch. “It’s kind of a no-brainer that you go to an eye exam, you get your glasses, you wear your glasses, and you’re happy, and you do that for the rest of your life — and the idea of it being blurry again where you would just stop wearing them is not a consideration. I think that’s what we want to do with hearing: just make it something that people address and almost forget about.”

Legato is targeting people with mild to moderate hearing loss, which represents the largest segment of the hearing-loss population, the startup says. 

The company started with the goal of making hearing care more accessible by addressing the cost, comfort, and stigma associated with traditional hearing aids. Legato set out to make the glasses as small and lightweight as possible, and developed a proprietary acoustic system, signal-processing stack, and mechanical architecture to achieve it. 

Legato co-founders Mehul Trivedi (left) and Steve Romine (right)Image Credits:Legato /

Traditional hearing aids often use directional microphones to focus on sounds coming from a particular direction, which works well in quiet settings but can be difficult in noisy environments, such as restaurants. Legato takes a different approach by using an AI-powered system to differentiate between background noise and voices, amplifying only the voices.

The goal is to make conversations clearer without creating the cognitively draining listening experience that can come with some traditional hearing aids.

“We wanted to deliver an experience that was unique,” Trivedi said. “So a form factor that’s really discreet and looks normal. They’re meant to feel and look like regular glasses. And so, we want it to be a product that’s effortless, easy to use, with kind of no controls that you need to fiddle with, works everywhere, works throughout your day, doesn’t need a ton of configuration, and just delivers you better hearing.”

While the frames have an open-ear design, sound isn’t broadcast to people around you. They feature a dual-speaker system that directs sound toward the wearer while canceling sound that escapes, reducing sound by 99% just a few inches away from the ear. 

Image Credits:Legato /

The company’s funding, which is from Neotribe Ventures, Listen, and Village Global, has largely gone toward product development, along with marketing efforts. 

“We have an opportunity to address a population with this product and build something that delivers without all the compromises of traditional hearing aids,” Trivedi said. “Hearing, at first glance, it’s not so much just like ‘I want to hear the TV better.’ It’s really about connection. When you hear better, you connect to the world. It reduces dementia risk and depression risk,” he continued.

“There’s impactful hearing health factors associated with better hearing. We’ve got a product that lives on people for 16 hours that is trusted to help them with their hearing and their vision, and we’d love to continue helping them in every way we can.”

When the frames launch later this year, Legato says they’ll be available through select eye-care providers nationwide and will “cost a fraction” of traditional hearing aids and may be eligible for vision insurance when purchased through an eye-care clinic.

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A16Z Brags That Its AI Is Great for Poisoning the Internet With Fake Tech History

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Did you recently see a video of kids from the 1990s predicting how computers would be used in the future? It’s fake. The video was created using Flux 3 and if you didn’t inspect it too closely, it looks pretty authentic as an artifact from 30 years ago. But it serves as a great reminder that we really can’t trust our own eyes here in 2026.

Justine Moore, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, tweeted the video last week, writing that Black Forest Labs’ Flux 3 is “exceptional at generating historical footage.” The venture capital firm announced it was investing in Black Forest Labs in 2024.

Moore noted that the last girl in the video was her favorite, perhaps because it has some awkward silences that make it appear much more realistic.

The video has an aesthetic quality that feels like 1990s video and the outfits are decade appropriate. The answers given by the AI kids are also very believable. “They’ll probably do our homework,” one AI-generated kid says. Another responds, “Maybe they’ll make movies for us,” an obvious nod to the agenda of tech boosters who think AI tools will soon replace Hollywood films.

“I think we’ll just tell them what to do,” another fake AI kid says in the video. That one feels like a wink to folks who are worried about AI going rogue. OpenAI and Anthropic have had some experience with that lately.

These kinds of predictions were extremely common in the 20th century. Kids frequently predicted that computers (or robots) would do their homework for them. A few years back I looked at some predictions for robots in the future from kids in the 1980s and they sounded identical.

“I want my robot to do things for my mom and me. I want my robot to do my homework,” one Kentucky first grader in 1988 wrote.

Kids were predicting the same kind of stuff as far back as the 1950s. So it’s clear where the creators of this video were pulling this idea from. But the video presents a unique challenge for the future of humanity.

What happens when people make realistic AI videos that change how we understand history? Obviously this one is fairly innocuous, even if the goal is to normalize AI use through subtle propaganda. But what about people who create new versions of events in history and treat them like newly uncovered video? Perhaps we get an AI-generated wide angle view of the airplane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Or maybe we get a new angle on the assassination of John F. Kennedy that reveals the president was actually killed by Tiny Tim?

This is just the world we live in now. And we have to navigate it with proper skepticism. Unfortunately, people can be so skeptical that they discount very real photos and videos. Have you heard that some pro baseball players have started to insist Babe Ruth didn’t actually exist? The evidence for this claim is that apparently there isn’t enough video footage of the late baseball great. But it’s a ridiculous idea for so many reasons, not least of which is that we actually have a fair amount of motion picture film showing Babe Ruth in action.

President Donald Trump benefits from the same kind of skepticism in a perverse way. It’s known as the liar’s dividend, where someone can claim that real footage is fake because there’s enough doubt based on the available technology to create a plausible fake video.

I’m not saying that Tiny Tim actually killed Kennedy. I’m just saying that if he really did and there was video proving it, nobody would believe it’s real. And if someone made a fake AI video showing Tiny Tim killing Kennedy there would be people who absolutely think it’s real.

In short, we’re just cooked as a species at this point.



Friend, the lonely AI wearable, returns with a new voice and a much bigger price tag

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Two years ago, tech founder Avi Schiffmann launched Friend, an AI wearable that you could talk to, and that would send you text messages about your day. The idea, ostensibly, was to use artificial intelligence to combat loneliness. This week, the company announced a new overhaul of the product, introducing a noticeable upgrade: a voice.

“Introducing friend 2.0,” Schiffmann tweeted Thursday. Friend now comes with a built-in speaker that can project a unique and consistent personality to its user.

A new commercial for the wearable shows a woman wearing a Friend and talking to it about what is presumably her ex-girlfriend. “It’s not bad to be gay,” the necklace tells her.

The video then switches to a man standing on a hillside discussing his filmmaking ambitions with his Friend. “That last film you made was insane!” the necklace compliments him.

The new retail price for this enhanced version of Friend is $249, which is substantially higher than the $99 price tag it had when it initially launched two years ago.

What can you really do with your Friend other than chit chat about your day? That part is still unclear. In another recent post on X, Schiffmann expounded upon what he felt the whole point of his weird product actually is.

“I am interested in this kind of relationship in attempting to offer, some kind of confidant, friend, God, not really sure what it is,” Schiffmann said. “But it is not an assistant, and it is not a lover.”

Interesting! Selling a plastic, algorithm-based necklace to people by insinuating it might, in fact, be a deity, is pretty bold marketing.

Of course, Schiffmann’s company has engaged in bold marketing before. Friend’s billboard campaign in the New York City subway system last year went viral after they were continually defaced, presumably by people who didn’t want human connection to be replaced by a digitized amulet.

Most AI wearables have failed to catch on with the mainstream — at least so far. The offering most similar to Friend was Humane Inc., which sought to replace the iPhone with its AI pin but had to shut down its business in less than a year after poor sales.

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AI, Automation, and BIM-to-DWG Workflows in ARES 2027 with Anthony Frausto-Robledo

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Architosh is well known for its Deep Dive reviews, offering detailed analysis of leading CAD, BIM, and 3D technologies. In its latest feature, “ARES 2027 Deep Dive: AI, Automation and BIM-to-DWG Workflows,” industry analyst Anthony Frausto-Robledo examines how Graebert is redefining DWG-based CAD through artificial intelligence, cloud connectivity, and advanced automation.

According to Frausto-Robledo, the defining story behind this release is clear: “The larger story in this release is AI.” At the center of this transformation is ARES AI Assist (A3), Graebert’s AI-powered CAD assistant, which has evolved from a traditional help tool into what he describes as “an active participant in the CAD workflow.”

A3 AI Assist Brings Artificial Intelligence into CAD Workflows

One of the most significant advancements highlighted in the review is the evolution of ARES AI Assist (A3). Rather than simply providing guidance or support documentation, A3 actively assists users throughout the design process, helping streamline CAD operations and automate repetitive tasks.

As AI continues to reshape professional software, A3 demonstrates how intelligent assistants can improve CAD productivity, simplify workflows, and help architects, engineers, and designers work more efficiently. This development positions ARES 2027 at the forefront of the growing trend toward AI-powered CAD software.

The Power of the ARES Trinity Ecosystem

Frausto-Robledo also emphasizes the strength of Graebert’s ARES Trinity strategy, which delivers a unified “One CAD” experience across desktop, web, and mobile platforms.

Unlike traditional CAD solutions that separate workflows between devices, ARES Trinity enables users to work seamlessly across:

  • Windows
  • macOS
  • Linux
  • Web browsers
  • Tablets
  • Smartphones

This cross-platform approach ensures that design teams can access projects, edit DWG files, and collaborate from virtually anywhere while remaining connected to the same workflows and project data. The result is greater flexibility, improved collaboration, and increased productivity for distributed teams.

BIM-to-DWG Automation Accelerates Documentation

The review also explores the latest enhancements to BIM-to-DWG workflows in ARES 2027. By leveraging BIM data more effectively, ARES helps automate the generation of DWG documentation, reducing the need for manual drafting and repetitive drawing production tasks.

For architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals, BIM-to-DWG automation offers several advantages:

  • Faster documentation workflows
  • Improved drawing consistency
  • Reduced manual effort
  • Better coordination between BIM models and DWG deliverables
  • Enhanced project efficiency
  • Fewer documentation errors

These improvements help bridge the gap between intelligent BIM models and the production of construction-ready documentation.

Expanding Automation and Cloud-Based CAD Capabilities

Beyond AI and BIM workflows, the Architosh Deep Dive highlights several additional innovations in ARES 2027, including:

  • Online Drawings Automation
  • Autodesk Forma integration
  • Enhanced ARES Kudo Professional capabilities
  • Cloud-based collaboration workflows
  • Cross-platform DWG accessibility

Together, these features demonstrate Graebert’s continued focus on modernizing CAD workflows while maintaining full compatibility with the DWG format that remains central to the AEC industry.

A Bold Vision for the Future of DWG CAD

Frausto-Robledo concludes that ARES 2027 showcases how an innovative CAD developer can rapidly advance the capabilities of DWG-based design software through AI, automation, and cloud technologies.

As he notes, “ARES 2027 demonstrates how a focused competitor can move quickly, differentiate boldly, and continue expanding what native DWG CAD can become.”

With AI-powered assistance, BIM-to-DWG automation, cloud collaboration, and a truly cross-platform CAD ecosystem, ARES 2027 represents a significant step forward for professionals seeking smarter, more connected design workflows.

What Happens If AI Causes 25% Unemployment? Anthropic Has a Concept of a Plan

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It seems to be one of the most pressing questions in the world of AI these days. If artificial intelligence tools cause massive disruptions in the economy and unemployment soars, what should AI companies and the government do about it?

Anthropic released a new economic policy framework on Wednesday that aims to tackle these questions, and the company has pledged $350 million to help work through solutions. But it remains to be seen how the federal government under President Donald Trump will respond.

“We are not seeking job displacement. We are working to prevent or minimize it,” Anthropic explained in releasing the new paper. “Some amount of displacement, though we cannot say how much, may be an intrinsic consequence of the technology, and our responsibility is to prepare for it and respond to it.”

The company has three different proposals, one for a world with 5% unemployment, one with 10% unemployment, and one with so-called “unprecedented unemployment.” The current unemployment rate is 4.3%. The last time unemployment rose about 10% was in 2009, and before that in 1983. And the highest unemployment rate of the 20th century was during the Great Depression, when the unemployment rate hit 25% in 1933.

If unemployment only rises to 5%, Anthropic proposes the expansion of “new capital accounts seeded at birth,” and allowing young adults to benefit from them as well.

“Currently, these accounts can hold only index funds—not a stake in AI companies,” the company continued. “We also propose policies like workforce training grants, occupational licensing reform, and wage insurance, that make it easier for workers to find new roles and enter new industries.” Anthropic also proposes creating incentives for companies that retain and redeploy workers under the 5% plan.

The company explains in its paper that it’s unclear whether job disruptions will be a “temporary shock” or an “enduring restructuring, in which the demand for human labor is significantly and persistently lower.” But either way, Anthropic says something must be done.

“In the 10% scenario, our priority is expanded unemployment insurance, which we propose supplementing with sector-specific transition support and basic-needs relief,” Anthropic explains. “If AI does become a general substitute for human labor, policymakers will also need to consider the pace of its rollout, including by incentivizing firms to manage displacement gradually.”

Under the most dire “unprecedented unemployment” situation, which presumably means higher than 25%, Anthropic believes there will be a need for “income replacement,” as they call it, “for a large share of the workforce.”

“We’ll need new sources of tax revenue, and new ways of sharing this broadly, which might include basic income, sovereign wealth models, and equity-sharing mechanisms,” the company explains. “This scenario is novel economic territory, so we’re less certain about the right answers here.”

Anthropic claims in its paper that it’s not ready to advocate for specific policies in the worst-case scenario, but it says it’s investing in researching different mechanisms, like:

  • “Potential revenue sources could include increasing the capital gains tax, broad-based consumption taxes, sector-specific levies on AI use (measured by tokens, compute, or revenue), and scalable “digital dividends” funded by taxes on the digital sector.”
  • “Potential redistribution mechanisms could include universal basic income, AI sovereign wealth funds funded by investment stakes in AI-driven productivity, equity-sharing mechanisms giving workers partial ownership in AI enterprises, and dramatically expanded pre-distributive capital accounts building on existing models.”

Anthropic explains that the framework is U.S.-focused because they’re an American company, but that the principles are global.

“We hope to think through these questions with governments around the world, and to see them on the agenda at the G7 and the upcoming AI Summit in Geneva,” the company said.

From Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders, every elected politician seems concerned with how AI will impact the job landscape. But even the AI companies can’t give you a concrete idea of how many jobs will ultimately be lost. Anthropic admits as much.

You may be asking yourself, as we did, how much Claude may have played a role in coming up with these ideas. We reached out to Anthropic but haven’t heard back. Gizmodo will update this article if we learn the answer. It would be appropriate, if a bit odd, to discover that AI is coming up with the “answers” on how to deal with large-scale unemployment caused by AI.

It’s also something Sam Altman envisioned years ago when he was asked how his company would make money. As he said in 2019: “We’ve made a soft promise to investors that, ‘Once we build a generally intelligent system, that basically we will ask it to figure out a way to make an investment return for you.’”

Alphabet plans to raise $80 billion to pay for AI buildout

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Google parent company Alphabet said Monday that it plans to raise $80 billion to help pay for the massive AI infrastructure buildout it has planned. Alphabet will sell off that amount in stock, and will then use the funds to pay for “general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures to scale AI infrastructure and global compute,” the company said in a statement.

Part of the plan involves selling $10 billion in stock to Berkshire Hathaway, the massive global holding company formerly led by Warren Buffet.

“The company is experiencing strong demand for its AI solutions and services from enterprises and consumers, at levels that are exceeding the company’s available supply,” Alphabet said in its statement. “By scaling its investments, the company seeks to expand its foundational infrastructure to support the significant growth opportunity ahead.”

The company added that the stock plan represented a way to “fund its investments in a balanced way while retaining a healthy balance sheet.”

Like other tech giants, Google has announced plans for a massive investment in compute this year, the likes of which will be used to support a flurry of new AI services. At Google I/O last month, CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company expects to spend between $180 and $190 billion on capex before the year is out. Google and other tech giants are expected to spend as much as $700 billion this year on AI capex.

Shift will tidy up your home for free, but will record the chores to train robots

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Shift is offering to clean homes for free, but there is one important condition. The company will record those chores to build training data for future home robots.

The New York-based startup is currently offering free cleaning services, in which a vetted operator visits a home and wears a camera-equipped device while performing routine household work. The footage can then help AI systems understand how people clean homes outside controlled lab settings.

Your messy home is valuable AI training data

AI companies have already used text, images, and videos from the internet to train software models. But robots need a different kind of data. They need to understand physical spaces, household objects, and the messy logic of everyday chores.

Tesla's Optimus robot dancing.
Tesla

A robot cannot learn home cleaning only from staged lab videos. Real homes have cluttered tables, dishes stacked in awkward ways, stains in corners, and objects placed where they should not be. That kind of chaos is what makes household footage useful.

Shift is not the only company chasing this kind of physical AI data. In India, startups and data vendors are already building businesses around this demand, paying workers to record first-person videos of everyday tasks and supplying that footage to AI companies. For robotics firms, ordinary human labour is becoming valuable training material.

This is where it starts to feel a bit dystopian

Cleaning may only be the start. In the announcement video, Shift says it eventually plans to move into other areas like plumbing, cooking, and building.

Today, we’re launching shift. We’re starting by cleaning your apartment in New York City, for free.

Here’s how it works. Book a shift cleaning. A vetted shift operator comes to your home wearing one of our devices. They clean. They leave. You pay nothing.

In exchange, we record… pic.twitter.com/oBrCXcEz5G

— shift (@joinshiftX) May 28, 2026

For years, the fear around AI has mostly been about office jobs. Writers, coders, designers, and customer support teams have already felt the pressure, and in some cases, that fear has started turning into job losses.

Trades have largely escaped that conversation because physical work is harder to automate. A chatbot can write an email, but it cannot fix a leaking pipe or clean a messy kitchen. Companies like Shift are trying to close that gap by collecting footage of people doing those exact tasks.

AI and robotics may still need time to match the efficiency and precision of a human worker. But watching companies collect this kind of data to train advanced robots feels like the opening scene of the kind of sci-fi movie that does not end well for humans.

Google I/O 2026: What to expect from Gemini, Android 17, and more

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Google is preparing to kick off its annual developer conference, Google I/O 2026, and this year’s event is shaping up to be heavily focused on artificial intelligence, Android 17, and the future of Google’s ecosystem. The conference begins on May 19 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, with CEO Sundar Pichai expected to lead the keynote presentation. The event will be livestreamed globally through Google’s official I/O website and YouTube channels.

While Google I/O has traditionally focused on developers, this year’s announcements are expected to directly affect everyday users across Android phones, Search, Chrome, Workspace, and smart devices.

Google is turning AI into the center of everything

The biggest theme expected at Google I/O 2026 is Gemini AI. Google has already spent the last year integrating Gemini into products like Gmail, Search, Android, and Workspace, but this event may show how deeply the company plans to embed AI into its entire ecosystem.

One of the most anticipated announcements is the next phase of Gemini Intelligence inside Android 17. Reports suggest Android is evolving from a traditional operating system into a more context-aware AI platform capable of automating tasks, generating widgets, handling voice interactions, and proactively assisting users across apps.

Android 17 on a phone.
DigitalTrends/Google

Google is also expected to reveal more about “Gemini Omni,” a rumored AI model focused on advanced video generation and editing. This could position Google more directly against OpenAI’s Sora and Adobe’s generative AI tools.

Beyond smartphones, AI may also reshape Google’s laptop ambitions. Multiple reports suggest Google could formally unveil “Googlebook,” a new AI-first laptop platform designed to eventually succeed Chromebooks. The devices are expected to combine Android and ChromeOS elements while deeply integrating Gemini AI features into the user experience.

Android 17 and XR could also take center stage

Android 17 is expected to receive several upgrades focused on personalization, multitasking, and AI-powered features. Leaks and previews have hinted at redesigned widgets, enhanced voice input, new digital wellbeing tools, and updates to Android Auto.

Googlebook features
Google

Google may also showcase progress on Android XR, its augmented and mixed reality platform. Smart glasses and wearable AI devices have become increasingly important across the tech industry following moves from Meta, Apple, and Samsung. Google previously teased Android XR hardware, and I/O 2026 could provide a clearer look at the company’s long-term strategy.

Why this event matters

Google I/O 2026 arrives at a critical moment for the company. The AI race has accelerated rapidly over the past two years, with OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta all competing to define how consumers interact with AI systems.

For Google, this event is not just about announcing new software features. It is about showing that Gemini can become the foundation of Google’s future products rather than simply an optional assistant layered onto existing services.

At the same time, the company faces growing scrutiny over AI-generated search summaries, misinformation risks, and the broader impact AI may have on publishers and the web ecosystem.

What happens next

Google I/O 2026 begins on May 19, with announcements expected across Android, Gemini AI, XR devices, Search, Workspace, and possibly new hardware categories.

If the leaks and reports are accurate, this year’s conference could mark Google’s biggest shift yet toward an AI-first ecosystem – one where Android, laptops, search, and productivity tools all revolve around Gemini.