Voice interaction is poised to be a cornerstone of the user experience with AI, as demonstrated by Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Credit: photosince via Shutterstock.

Google‘s I/O developer conference in May 2024 demonstrated that the battle for AI dominance will be played out on smartphones.

The event included a flurry of announcements, but Google Android (Android) took centre stage, with the company introducing multiple user-friendly integrations of Google Gemini (Gemini) AI into Android and its services. The AI examples showcased at Google’s I/O were primarily focused on smartphones, including an early version of Google’s multimodal AI assistant, Project Astra.

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This real-time assistant, demonstrated by Demis Hassabis, head of Google DeepMind, allows users to interact with their smartphones in a conversational manner, identifying objects, finding lost items, and more. As rival OpenAI is rumoured to have partnered with tech giant Apple to bring its AI models to Apple iPhones, Google’s inclusion of multimodality attributes on its on-device AI model, Gemini Nano, gives it an early advantage.

User experience augmentation emerging as a use case for Google

The conference highlighted the company’s objective – to deeply integrate its Gemini AI model into all its software and hardware. The key use case that emerged at Google’s developer conference was to make day-to-day tasks easier for consumers via the apps and services they already use.

For instance, Gemini can now build travel itineraries by analysing flight and hotel details from a user’s email, in addition to gathering information from online sources. It can also interpret images, such as extracting event information from a picture and automatically adding it to a calendar, eliminating the need for manual input.

Voice will be a user experience pillar

Voice interaction is poised to be a cornerstone of the user experience with AI. Google’s demonstrations of Gemini’s image interpretation capabilities, its ‘Ask Photos’ feature, retrieved a picture of CEO Sundar Pichai’s license plate number based on location and historical data from Google Photos.

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This capability, coupled with the six billion daily Google Photo uploads, underscores the potential for AI to become an indispensable part of consumer lives. Existing voice solutions, be it Apple Siri, Google Assistant, or Amazon Alexa, have not fully met user expectations in terms of command recognition, accuracy, and privacy. The effectiveness and superiority of Gemini’s offering in comparison to these incumbents will be a determining factor in its market success.

Potential for Google AI dominance

The company plans to roll out Gemini updates to 200 million devices by end-2024, an indication of how powerfully impactful this platform can be. However, it is early days, and the most effective monetisation strategies are yet to be determined. The company has invested heavily in hardware due to the importance of AI, but it has struggled to effectively market itself to consumers.

Despite these challenges, Google has the best chance of dominating the AI space due to its extensive user base and growing device ecosystem.