![\"\"](\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/verge-google-beam-ai-agent.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100\")
<\/a><\/p>\nImage: Matt Piniol \/ The Verge<\/p>\n
Today, Google is experimentally revealing \u201cBeam video agents,\u201d which it\u2019s pitching as an exploration into the future of real-time communication with AI agents, using Google Beam.<\/p>\n
Beam, if you\u2019ll recall<\/a>, is the company\u2019s moderately mindblowing teleconferencing hardware that makes people feel like their conversation partner is right in front of them in stunning glasses-free 3D. The first Google Beam product is the $25,000 HP Dimension<\/a>. Its six cameras don\u2019t actually send video of another person. Instead, AI servers combine them into a volumetric 3D projection of a person \u2014 basically, the most lifelike video game character I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n You can kind of see the 3D even on your flat screen, thanks to this parallax footage Google helped capture for us. Animation: Google \/ The Verge<\/p>\n When I try Beam for the very first time, with Beam boss Andrew Nartker on the other side, visions of the Star Trek holodeck begin dancing before my eyes. But what if you weren\u2019t talking to a person to begin with? What if it was a virtual character all along?<\/p>\n Sophie, unfortunately, is not in 3D yet, and \u201cshe\u201d is not a character either \u2014 at least not with the limited feature set Google has enabled today. Like any second-gen chatbot, Sophie is here to mirror me, to unconvincingly act excited by everything I say, to act as my subservient concierge. Sophie always speaks after a long pause, in tight blocks of text that are always roughly the same length, starting with an acknowledgement and ending with a question about which capability it should demo next.<\/p>\n That\u2019s intentional, says the team, because this demo was created specifically for Google I\/O attendees to experience a five-minute demo of what Sophie can do, like creating a generative AI picture. I ask it to tell me a bedtime story and facepalm when it produces a ridiculous image of me manipulating some magical contraption with the help of a giant fox. (My kids would probably love it.)<\/p>\n Sophie and the generative AI image. Image: Matt Piniol \/ The Verge<\/p>\n I won\u2019t sugarcoat it: This doesn\u2019t feel like talking to a person. There are too many cracks in the facade. Why does Sophie\u2019s accent keep weirdly changing, sometimes developing a southern twang that goes away just as quickly? It\u2019s meant to have a neutral American accent when speaking in American English, says product manager Pavan Kumar, but the AI model seems to be unintentionally drifting. I notice that Sophie keeps making the same exact arm gestures while speaking, too \u2014 probably because this early experiment is built off an audio model. Text drives speech, speech drives a lip-synced face, and gestures are presumably gravy on top.<\/p>\n (And yes, the subservient AI is female as usual<\/a>. It\u2019s because Sophie has a personality that everyone felt comfortable talking to, says Nartker.)<\/p>\n Google Labs\u2019 Devika Lal (product manager on groups), Nick Garoufalis, and Emma van Niekerk beam in for a group call. Image: Matt Piniol \/ The Verge<\/p>\n Video agents aren\u2019t Beam\u2019s only new experiment that\u2019s not in 3D. Google is also showing off group calls on Beam for the very first time, and it\u2019s exactly what you\u2019d expect \u2014 Googlers can dial in from their laptop or phone like a normal Google Meet, a feature that was missing from Beam at launch but has been in development for a couple of years. (Google says it\u2019s working with Zoom too.)<\/p>\n That should definitely make justifying the purchase of a $25,000 device easier, and it comes with positional audio so the Beam user can tell who\u2019s speaking even more easily \u2014 though attendees may shrink down to smaller-than-lifelike proportions, or it may alternate who\u2019s on screen, if you have more than three counterparts on a call.<\/p>\n The only strange bit here is why Google\u2019s calling it an experiment instead of announcing a release date. With Beam video agents, the experimental tag makes more sense because it\u2019s not ready and Google\u2019s not 100 percent sure who it\u2019s for yet \u2014 though the company thinks it might be useful in workplaces, shops, and schools.<\/p>\n Image: Matt Piniol \/ The Verge<\/p>\n For me, the most tantalizing possibilities are the ones Nartker isn\u2019t showing me on our tour, as we walk past a robot arm designed to test the Beam\u2019s headtracking capabilities and a server rack full of Beam boards in the middle of accelerated lifecycle testing. Many of them run 10-hour loops, day after day, to ensure they can hold up to real-world use.<\/p>\n Nartker keeps hinting there are things we can\u2019t yet see in other parts of this building, things he\u2019s had staff clear away \u2014 at one point, he makes sure a particular door is closed before he offers us a glass of water. When he explains that both his digitally rendered body and my digitally rendered body are 3D meshes living in a cloud server, it hits me that they could also exist in a virtual world right now. Perhaps we could see them through a headset too?<\/p>\n I ask him about my theory. \u201cThere are lots of windows we\u2019d like to build: big windows, small windows. This is just a really excellent first window,\u201d says Nartker.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve already got an internal demo of this in VR, right?\u201d I ask, at a different point on the tour.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a big building, Sean!\u201d he teases. 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