Google I/O 2022 was easily Google’s biggest developer conference yet. The search company announced updates for nearly all of its services and ended the show with six hardware announcements including the Pixel 6a, Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel Buds Pro, Pixel Watch, and Pixel Tablet. In case you missed all the live developments earlier in the day, here’s a quick catch-up on all the biggest announcements.
Google Translate
Google Translate is getting a huge shot to the arm with 24 new languages added to the service. Among the new additions are the languages of indiginous native americans.
Google Maps
Google maps is representing more machine-learning scaled buildings on its maps. Google highlighted its maps now represent five times more buildings in Africa now for a total of 300 million now. Additionally, it has doubled the number of accounted for buildings in India and 20% more globally overall.
Additionally, Google Maps can now show more detail of buildings based on still images of their interior. The search company demoed showing the inside of restaurants using a flyover view created by neural renderings.
Google Maps is also getting eco-friendly routing to help you save on gas. According to Google, people have already been using them to travel 86 billion miles and saved enough gas to equal the equivalent of taking 100,000 cars off the road. Europe will be getting eco-friendly routes this year too.
YouTube
Expect to see more chaptered videos on YouTube soon. Google is applying its multimodal technology from DeepMind to increase the number of videos with automatically generated chapters by ten times. Additionally videos will also feature transcripts thanks to speech recognition and auto-translation.
Google Docs TLDR
If you’ve ever dreaded looking at a 25-page Google Doc, TLDR is here to save you by automatically summarizing documents.
Google Meet
Google is hoping to improve the way you look on a video call by introducing AI-powered portrait lighting. Users can simply drag a circle around to change the way virtual lighting is hitting your face for a better picture. Google says it pulled the tech over from its previous 3D telepresence project, Starline.
Google Multisearch
Google showed off a demo of the new Multisearch the company launched last month. Essentially it lets you search by taking a photo and asking a question at the same time in the Google app.
Real Tone
Real Tone started as a Google Pixel 6 project to better capture darker skin tones and now Google is expanding it to make all its products more inclusive. To that end, Google has developed a Monk Scale in collaboration with Dr. Mon to better represent skin tones. Now users can look up bridal makeup looks and then filter by skin tones to find more relevant results.
Beyond that Google is adding Real Tone as a search filter within Google Photos. In the coming months, Google plans on using skin tone, hair tone, and texture as a new way of labeling images through attributes.
Look and Talk
If you’re tired of saying Hey Google every time you want to use your Google Assistant, Google is making it a bit easier with Nest Devices.
Basically, if you have a Google device with a camera, like the Nest Hub Max, you can just look at it and just talk to it after your device recognizes you. The Google device just needs to match your face and voice before it starts listening to you.
Additionally, Google is adding quick phrases to do things like answer calls, stop timers, toggle lights, and more without having to say “Hey Google.”
LaMDA 2
Google is also making its AI assistant more conversational while reducing the number of inaccurate or offensive responses. Additionally, Google showed how LaMDA 2 can hold a conversation or even run a text-based adventure.
Virtual Credit Cards
Google is introducing virtual credit cards on Chrome and Android. Basically, you can pay with your real card through Google, but at the point of purchase, you’ll get a virtual card number to reduce fraud. Google says Visa, Amex, Capital One, MasterCard are all onboard to roll with the virtual card program starting this summer.
Google Pay
Google is overhauling Google Pay to make it more usable with tickets, passes, IDs, and more. The new Google Pay is minimalistic and useful for showing digital tickets, theme park passes, and student and state IDs.
Google Wear
Google Wear is finally getting an Emergency SOS feature so you can use it in life and death situations. Google also announced its earthquake alerting system is being expanded too.
Android 13
Google announced the Android 13 beta is dropping today. Android 13 promises to expand Material You color schemes to third-party apps and icons, as well as the media player. Google Messages will also finally get RCS support for group messages as part of a beta. The new version of Android should also come with Matter support, allowing users to quickly pair their smart home devices.
Google Pixel 6a
The first of many hardware announcements at Google I/O 2022, the Pixel 6a is Google’s newest budget smartphone that’ll release on July 28 for $449. It also happens to be Google’s first budget Pixel phone to feature its own self-made tensor chip. As you can see it takes its styling cues from the Pixel 6 phone series including the prominent camera bar. This new handset will also feature a 12MP main and ultrawide cameras, and it should be smaller than the Pixel 6.
Google Pixel 7
Google also teased us with the new Pixel 7 coming later this Fall. The search company showed an image of the new backsides of the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro in white with a matte and shiny aluminum camera bar.
Google Pixel Buds Pro
The Google Pixel Buds Pro is the company’s first noise-canceling earbuds yet. They also feature Google’s new custom audio processor, with 6 cores and a neural processing engine. Additionally, users can expect to get 7 hours with ANC turned on and 11 hours without ANC. The Google Pixel Buds Pro will be available for preorder July 21, and released July 28, for $199.
Google Pixel Watch
In yet another surprise, Google revealed its new Pixel Watch that will be arriving this fall. The WearOS smartwatch features a round and curved display with a tactile crown and stainless steel frame. Google also announced it will have deep Fitbit integration.
Google Pixel Tablet
And last but not least, Google announced its plans on introducing a Pixel tablet in 2023. Mercifully, the android tablet doesn’t feature a camera bar (yet), but it will be running some form of Google’s Tensor chip.
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Kevin Lee is IGN's SEO Updates Editor. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.
