What if you didn\u2019t have to dig through your inbox to schedule a follow-up doctor\u2019s appointment or type on a tiny keyboard to send emails on your way to work?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the future Google and other tech giants predict, with AI agents soon handling tasks<\/a> on our phones without constant prompting, potentially freeing us up to do other things.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s newest Pixel smartphones, announced Wednesday, carry features aimed in that direction. A new light on the Pixel 11 Pro\u2019s back will show when Gemini processes a command<\/a>, and a new Android feature later this year called Halo will show an AI agent\u2019s progress on a given task.<\/p>\n The new features come as Google and Apple, whose platforms run billions of smartphones around the world, continue to compete for dominance of our digital lives \u2013 and defend their turf against ChatGPT\u2019s growing presence.<\/p>\n Google typically considers how consumers will use their phones roughly three years ahead when planning versions of Android, said Sameer Samat, president of Google\u2019s Android ecosystem. So the features introduced today are a window into Google\u2019s prediction for how AI will change smartphones.<\/p>\n Right now, that vision for Android is that \u201cyou articulate goals or what you mean or what you\u2019re trying to achieve, and then the system is smart enough to do those things for you,\u201d Samat told CNN.<\/p>\n But growing public unease over the technology\u2019s social and economic impacts underscore the risks for AI\u2019s future. And the tech is still far from being able to carry out the kind of future Samat outlined to CNN.<\/p>\n Still, Google is banking on that vision.<\/p>\n \u201cI see a lot of folks, including myself, that are heads down in their phones, trying to get a lot of things done,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if you can give people that time back, five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, think what you can do with that.\u201d<\/p>\n The days of switching between apps to complete a task could be numbered.<\/p>\n For example, an AI agent may one day be able to go through the notes from your doctor\u2019s appointment, check with your insurance company about coverage and schedule an MRI visit, Samat said.<\/p>\n That scenario isn\u2019t possible in Android today. But Samat aims to move the software \u2013 which powers more than 70% of smartphones globally<\/a> \u2013 in a direction like this, where smartphones don\u2019t need to be \u201cmicromanaged.\u201d<\/p>\n The new light on the back of the Pixel 11 Pro shows when Gemini is processing a command or responding, which the company hopes will help users talk to the virtual assistant without picking up their phone to make sure the agent is listening.<\/p>\n Tech giants are preparing for a future in which talking to your tech becomes more common as part of this shift. That\u2019s why Google is launching a new tool called Rambler on its Pixel 11 devices. Rambler, which was announced in May, processes speech, cleans it up and packages it in a text or email, stripping away the \u201cumms,\u201d \u201clikes\u201d and other tics.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s latest Pixel launch is part of a broader smartphone industry push toward AI agents.<\/p>\n Samsung, one of the world\u2019s largest smartphone makers by market share, partners with Google to deeply integrate Gemini across its software.<\/p>\n Apple plans to launch a revamped version of Siri<\/a>, which it says can act across apps and incorporate personal information into answers, later this year. And OpenAI also released a big ChatGPT upgrade last month that makes talking to it feel more natural.<\/p>\n But consumers are growing increasingly wary of AI. Even though AI chatbot usage is growing, most Americans predict the technology will have a negative impact on society, according to Pew Research<\/a>. And 79% of Americans don\u2019t trust businesses to use AI in a responsible way, according to a different study from Gallup and Bently University<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear whether Google\u2019s technology will live up to its claims \u2013 or if consumers will spend less time on their phones because of it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a word that has come to mean a lot of things,\u201d Samat said referring to AI. \u201cInstead of talking about the tech, I think one of the things that\u2019s been much more of a focus for us is\u2026 \u2018How does it actually help you?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What if you didn\u2019t have to dig through your inbox to schedule a follow-up doctor\u2019s appointment or type…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[257],"tags":[291,821,297,18,823,19,17,279,82],"class_list":["post-639908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-ai","tag-android","tag-chatgpt","tag-eire","tag-google","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mobile","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117104478890506270","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}