Name: Android's AI Edge: Inside Google’s New Pixel 9 and Plan to Beat Apple's iPhone
Uploaded: 2024-08-13T17:00:00Z
Duration: 9 min 51 s
Description: Google’s Gemini Live AI voice assistant on Android and Pixel 9 phones sounds almost human. WSJ’s Joanna Stern tested it, and spoke exclusively with Google’s Android head Rick Osterloh about the company’s AI ambitions.

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Google’s Gemini Live AI voice assistant on Android and Pixel 9 phones sounds almost human. WSJ’s Joanna Stern tested it, and spoke exclusively with Google’s Android head Rick Osterloh about the company’s AI ambitions. Photo: Jacob Reynolds for The Wall Street Journal

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Google’s Gemini Live AI voice assistant on Android and Pixel 9 phones sounds almost human. WSJ’s Joanna Stern tested it, and spoke exclusively with Google’s Android head Rick Osterloh about the company’s AI ambitions.

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With Android, we're trying to move AI forward as fast as we can and really integrate all of our latest AI technologies. Probably the most important of which is Gemini. And this is gonna be a big evolution of our assistant capability.

Joanna: Not another tech executive telling you an AI assistant is gonna change the world, except this isn't just any tech exec. Rick Osterloh oversees all of Google's Android, Chrome and hardware products. And this isn't just any voice assistant.

Gemini: Hello, there. It's always nice to connect. How can I help you today?

Well, I'm in a conversation with Joanna Stern from "The Wall Street Journal." What do you think she's gonna ask me?

Gemini: That's really cool. Joanna Stern is a great interviewer.

Oh, yeah.

Gemini: What kind of questions do you think she'll ask?

Gemini Live is impressive and not only because of what it says about me. On Tuesday Google announced four new pixel phones, all with Gemini Live and many other new AI features. Gemini Live is also gonna be available on all Android phones, but are we really gonna buy new phones for AI? And is Google pitching us on a future we actually want? I went to Google to sit down with Osterloh, see some of the tech in action and get some answers. Can you do a thumbs up? All right, good. I stepped on your toe. If there was a dictionary definition of AI phones, what would it say?

It's a phone that's led by AI technologies and the way that you interact with it is through the AI primarily. You're just able to kind of converse with it like you would with a person.

Joanna: Gemini Live takes a big step towards doing exactly that. It will begin to take the place of Google Assistant on the new Pixels.

We've focused a lot on system performance, on low latency, so you can have this quick dialogue and it feels like a natural conversation. We also made it possible to interrupt it.

Are you there?

Yes, I'm here.

I have this big interview coming up soon and I'm a little nervous. Any tips?

Gemini: That makes sense? Interviews can definitely make a lot of people nervous. Do you have a specific part of the interview that worries you? Like the questions or something else?

And the ability to interrupt is impressive. I wanna make something that's healthy. It needs protein, some vegetables, salad. What would you make? Actually--

Well, you could try grill--

I wanna change my mind?

Roasted salmon

I wanna change my mind about something. I wanna also add a carb.

Gemini: No problem. You could add some sweet potatoes to that salmon and asparagus. Or maybe some brown rice to the stir fry.

But it's not perfect. Can you just set a timer?

Gemini: So I can't use alarms and timers yet when we're live.

What do you know about Rick Osterloh?

Gemini: So are you talking about Rick Springfield, the singer and songwriter, or someone else?

Apple Siri and OpenAI's ChatGPT have similar advanced voice capabilities on the way, but if you have an Android phone, the Gemini app and the Gemini advanced subscription, you can get this right now. It's also on all the new Pixel phones, including the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and the coming Pixel Buds Pro 2. Is this the future? All of us just walking around talking to our AI assistants?

I think it's certainly gonna be a new way that people do interact with AI and that's why we design Pixel Buds to be small, to be wearable all day, to have great battery life and also to be able to go live right away.

Sounds a lot like a movie you may have seen.

Samantha: I wanna learn everything about everything.

Theodore: I love the way you look at the world.

There seems to be this like obsession in Silicon Valley with recreating the movie "Her". Yet people seem to forget the ending of that movie, which wasn't great for the human.

Yeah, I mean that's certainly not our intent. Our goal, we wanna make AI really helpful for people. We wanna make sure that it's safe and responsibly built.

So you don't necessarily want me to fall in love?

I don't think that's a good idea.

Another AI trick, coming to the new Pixels, adding someone to a photo. Instead of handing a phone over to a stranger, the phone uses augmented reality to scan the area. Then you snap a photo of one person.

Ready, Joanna?

I'm ready. You swap spots.

Now I'm gonna hand it to you.

Okay. Can you do a thumbs up on your... Very good. Then it stitches the person into the shot. That is real good.

Dude, it worked.

I guess he didn't feel when I stepped on his foot. A lot of these use AI to help manipulate the photo to take the better photo, but in some ways it also changes reality.

I don't think it really changes reality. What I mean, what we're trying to do is give users a a range of tools from capturing the moment to being able to edit that moment later and store the memory how they want. And so this is no different than how people would take photographs in the past and then edit it using Photoshop.

Are you ever just like looking at photos now and you're like, is that real?

I think a lot of people have thought that for a long time, especially in the area of social media where people are sharing things like is that a real photo? And so you know it is a complicated world, but we're trying to just serve our users and figure out what they want.

There's another Pixel only AI tool. Call notes. You can call, say your sister and...

Sister: Hello?

Announcer: Google call notes is on. The call is recording.

Sister: Why are you recording me?

Joanna: The AI will transcribe and summarize the call.

Sister: This is very good for you because there are so many things that I tell you that I know for sure did not land in that brain of yours. So let's do it. What do you wanna know?

I'm wondering when your next trip to New Jersey's gonna be.

Sister: November 16th through that Friday after Thanksgiving.

The AI summarization captured that. Though not as specifically as I would've liked, but it didn't quite get my three-year-old niece's joke.

Niece: Why did the hot dog cross the road?

Why did the hot dog cross the road? I don't know. Why?

Niece: Because to get to his car.

Google summarized that as why the Hot Pocket crossed the road, which well, yeah. Osterloh said all the processing of the call happens on the device using the Pixel's powerful tensor G4 chip. Are you using personal data to train Gemini and other Google LLMs?

So no, we're not using personal data to train LLMs. Like we are using information that users have given us the ability to train on or that is from the public web.

To confirm, my phone calls, my emails, my calendar appointments, my text messages, those are not being used to train?

Those are not being used to train, that's right.

Joanna: Osterloh is confident that these Gemini Android features are better than what iPhone owners are gonna get with Apple Intelligence.

Because we're a trusted provider to so many users with a combination of this personal information and this information from the web, we think we can deliver a unique AI solution that no one else can. Being able to understand what's on your calendar, but marrying that information with like how long it might take to get to my doctor's appointment, which is information that comes from the world, is really important.

Apple has said that they're gonna allow choice on what LLM you tap. So they're starting with ChatGPT and OpenAI. Is Google and talks with Apple to do that?

I've really focused on Android and our devices. However, it's certainly the case that we want Gemini to be everywhere, so no doubt we'll be working on solutions for iOS and other platforms just to make sure everyone can have access to Gemini.

But even though these Pixel phones rival the best iPhone or Samsung, most won't buy a Pixel. Google's own devices only have 3% of US smartphone market share and not even 1% globally. Is there any doubt about pouring all these resources into a small fraction of the market?

No, I mean for us it's very important. It's how we help build the platform. The pixel phones represent all that Google has in our AI research capabilities brought to our users right on their phones.

Joanna: Osterloh's vision isn't just AI in phones and earbuds. At Google's developers conference in May, it showed glasses. The built-in AI could see the world and answer questions about it, think Google Glass, but cool and useful.

We've been working on glasses for a very long time and we've never stopped working on them. But what's really important is that we are going to keep working on this technology until we think it's just right. So no doubt, sometime in the next few years we'll see something like that come to market.

But before we get there, Google may need to rethink its AI marketing and how it convinces us to use these tools. Recently the company ran a Gemini ad during the Olympics.

Dad: So Gemini help my daughter write a letter telling Sydney how inspiring she is.

Google pulled the spot after backlash. The message for many was that AI is gonna come in and take away this personal relationship, right? You see this father turn to AI instead of then working with his daughter on writing this note. Seems a little tone deaf.

I think clearly the market isn't fully ready to embrace all the changes that come with AI, but on the other hand, I'd also say like it's a really powerful tool. And so just like in the past, like my parents would get upset at me if I didn't write handwritten thank you notes to people. And today I write them an email, I can do 10 times more emails than handwritten thank you notes. And I feel like over time people will come to adopt technologies that help them get more done and be more productive and in this case touch more people. And I think that's what we were trying to get to with the ad. I think maybe we missed the mark with it.

Hey, maybe the moral of the story is just to make a phone call with a Pixel. What's going on?

Sister: It's 7:00 AM and I'm on vacation.

Is there any food that you think I should start getting ready for you?

Sister: No.

Android's AI Advantage: Inside Google’s Plans to Beat Apple (Exclusive)

Everything is now a tech thing. In creative and humorous videos, WSJ senior personal tech columnist Joanna Stern explains and reviews the products, services and trends that are changing our world.

Android's AI Advantage: Inside Google’s Plans to Beat Apple (Exclusive)

Tech Things With Joanna Stern

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