TECH NEWS – At Made by Google 2024, the Alphabet subsidiary unveiled its plans to compete with OpenAI’s advanced voice communication technology.

While the event was mostly focused on hardware, they did touch on artificial intelligence. At the beginning of the show, they showed how the new devices could use these advanced features, all of which will be integrated into the Google ecosystem. Google is actively developing Gemini and its accessibility, and the retirement of Google Assistant was a step in this direction, as its successor will also be deployable with voice communication.

It’s clear that not everything goes as well in a live environment as it does in a sterile lab, as the demonstration got off to a rocky start. Gemini Live will be the default assistant on the new hardware, and the company demonstrated this at length. Not only did they use their own Pixel smartphones for the demonstration, but they also deployed the generative (content-creating) AI assistant on other devices to give us a proper look at the technology as it works.

Of course, the technology isn’t free. OK, if you get a Google Pixel 9 Pro or Pro XL as your new phone, it’s free for a year, but otherwise you’ll have to pay $20 a month for a Google One AI Premium Plan subscription, as Gemini Advanced membership is a requirement for the voice assistant. According to Google, the cloud computing is secure, and the AI data on your Google device generally doesn’t leave your phone. Google’s voice feature uses advanced speech technology to create a more emotive and stable chatbot. It can understand and identify with your tone of voice. It can also interrupt us with more questions.

Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash power the generative AI feature, so it can interpret and respond to larger coherent texts, allowing you to use Gemini Live for longer. Multimodal input is still missing and will be released later this year.

Source: WCCFTech, Google