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Google I/O showcases new ‘Ask Photos’ tool, powered by AI – but it honestly scares me a little
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At the Google I/O 2024 keynote today, CEO Sundar Pichai debuted a new feature for the nine-year-old Google Photos app: 'Ask Photos', an AI-powered tool that acts as an augmented search function for your photos.

The goal here is to make finding specific photos faster and easier. You ask a question – Pichai's example is 'what's my license plate number' – and the app uses AI to scan through your photos and provide a useful answer. In this case, it isolates the car that appears the most, then presents you with whichever photo shows the number plate most clearly.

Google IO 2024

I really want to know if this is a Google employee’s actual child or if it’s a Gemini-generated kid… (Image credit: Google )

It can reportedly handle more in-depth queries, too: Pichai went on to explain that if your hypothetical daughter Lucia has been learning to swim, you could ask the app to 'show me how Lucia's swimming has progressed', and it'll present you with a slideshow showcasing Lucia's progression. The AI (powered by Google's Gemini model) is capable of identifying the context of images, such as differentiating between swimming in a pool and snorkeling in the ocean, and even highlighting the dates on photos of her swimming certificates.

While the Photos app already had a search function, it was fairly rudimentary, only really capable of identifying text within images and retrieving photos from selected dates and locations. 

Ask Photos is apparently “an experimental feature” that will start to roll out “soon”, and it could get more features in the future. As it is, it's a seriously impressive upgrade – so why am I terrified of it?

Eye spy

A major concern surrounding AI models is data security. Gemini is a predominantly cloud-based AI tool (its data parameters are simply too large to be run locally on your device), which introduces a potential security vulnerability as your data has to be sent to an external server via the internet, a flaw that doesn't exist for on-device AI tools.

Ask Photos is powerful enough to not only register important personal details from your camera roll, but also understand the context behind them. In other words, the Photos app – perhaps one of the most innocuous apps on your Android phone's home screen – just became the app that potentially knows more about your life than any other.

I can't be the only person who saw this revealed at Google I/O and immediately thought 'oh, this sounds like an identity thief's dream'. How many of us have taken a photo of a passport or ID to complete an online sign-up? If malicious actors gain remote access to your phone or are able to intercept your Ask Photos queries, they could potentially take better advantage of your photo library than ever before.

Google says it's guarding against this kind of scenario, stating that “The information in your photos can be deeply personal, and we take the responsibility of protecting it very seriously. Your personal data in Google Photos is never used for ads. And people will not review your conversations and personal data in Ask Photos, except in rare cases to address abuse or harm.”

It continues that “We also don't train any generative AI product outside of Google Photos on this personal data, including other Gemini models and products. As always, all your data in Google Photos is protected with our industry-leading security measures.”

So, nothing to worry about? We'll see. But quite frankly… I don't need an AI to help me manage my photo library anyway. Honestly Google, it really isn't that hard to make some folders.

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Google’s Project Astra could supercharge the Pixel 9 – and help Google Glass make a comeback
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I didn't expect Google Glass to make a minor comeback at Google I/O 2024, but it did thanks to Project Astra. 

That's Google's name for a new prototype of AI agents, underpinned by the Gemini multimodal AI, that can make sense of video and speech inputs, and smartly react to what a person is effectively looking at and answer queries about it. 

Described as a “universal AI” that can be “truly helpful in everyday life”, Project Astra is designed to be proactive, teachable, and able to understand natural language. And in a video ,Google demonstrated this with a person using what looked like a Pixel 8 Pro with the Astra AI running on it. 

By pointing the phone's camera at room, the person was able to ask Astra to “tell me when you see something that makes sound”, to which the AI will flagged a speaker it can see within the camera's viewfinder. From there the person was able to ask what a certain part of the speaker was, with the AI replying that the part in question is a tweeter and handles high frequencies. 

But Astra does a lot more: it can identify code on a monitor and explain what it does, and it can work out where someone is in a city and provide a description of that area. Heck, when promoted, it can even make an alliterative sentence around a set of crayons in a fashion that's a tad Dr Zeus-like.

It can can even recall where the user has left a pair of glasses, as the AI remembers where it saw them last. It was able to do the latter as AI is designed to encode video frames of what it's seen, combine that video with speech inputs and put it all together in a timeline of events, caching that information so it can recall it later at speed. 

Then flipping over to a person wearing the Google Glass 'smart glasses', Astra could see that the person was looking at a diagram of a system on a whiteboard, and figure out where optimizations could be made when asked about them. 

Such capabilities suddenly make Glass seem genuinely useful, rather than the slightly creepy and arguably dud device it was a handful of years ago; maybe we'll see Google return to the smart glasses arena after this. 

Project Astra can do all of this thanks to using multimodal AI, which in simple terms is a mix of neural network models that can process data and inputs from multiple sources; think mixing information from cameras and microphones with knowledge the AI has already been trained on.

Google didn't say when Project Astra will make it into products, or even into the hands of developers, but Google's DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said that “some of these capabilities are coming to Google products, like the Gemini app, later this year.” I'd be very surprised if that doesn't mean the Google Pixel 9, which we're expecting to arrive later this year.

Now it's worth bearing in mind that Project Astra was shown off in a very slick video, and the reality of such onboard AI agents is they can suffer from latency. But it's a promising look at how Google will likely integrate actually useful AI tools into its future products.

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Google teases new AI-powered Google Lens trick in feisty ChatGPT counter-punch
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It's another big week in artificial intelligence in a year that's been full of them, and Google has teased a new AI feature coming to mobile devices just hours ahead of its Google I/O 2024 event – where we're expecting some major announcements.

A social media post from Google shows someone asking their phone about what's being shown through the camera. In this case, it's people setting up the Google I/O stage, which the phone correctly identifies.

User and phone then go on to have a real-time chat about Google I/O 2024, complete with a transcription of the conversation on screen. We don't get any more information than that, but it's clearly teasing some of the upcoming reveals.

As far as we can tell, it looks like a mix of existing Google Lens and Google Gemini technologies, but with everything running instantly. Lens and Gemini can already analyze images, but studying real-time video feeds would be something new.

The AI people

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It's all very reminiscent of the multimodal features – mixing audio, text, and images – that OpenAI showed off with its own ChatGPT bot yesterday. ChatGPT now has a new AI model called GPT-4 Omni (GPT-4o), which makes all of this natural interaction even easier.

We've also seen the same kind of technology demoed on the Rabbit R1 AI device. The idea is that these AIs become less like boxes that you type text into, and more like synthetic people who can see, recognize, and talk.

Based on this teaser, it looks likely that this is the way the Google Gemini AI model and bot is going. While we can't identify the smartphone in the video, it may be that these new features come to Pixel phones (like the new Google Pixel 8a) first.

All will be revealed later today, May 14: everything gets underway at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST, which is May 15 at 3am AEST. We've put together a guide to how to watch Google I/O 2024 online, and we'll be reporting live from the event too.

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Apple and Google have teamed up to help make it easier to spot suspicious item trackers
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As part of iOS 17.5, Apple is finally rolling out its Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers specification, allowing mobile users to locate suspiciously placed AirTags and other similar devices. Simply, this update has been a long time coming. 

To give a quick breakdown of the situation at large, Bluetooth trackers were being used as a way to stalk people. Google announced that it and Apple were teaming up to tackle this problem. The former sought to upgrade its Find My Device network quickly but decided to postpone the launch, partly to wait until Apple finished developing its new standard.

With iOS 17.5, though, Apple states that your iPhone will notify you if an unknown Bluetooth tracker device was placed on you. If it sniffs something out, an “[Item] Found Moving With You” alert will appear on the smartphone screen. 

Upon detection, your iPhone can trigger a noise on the tracker to help you locate it. An accompanying notification will include a guide showing you how to disable the gadget. You can find these instructions on Apple’s support website.

Supporting devices

The detection tool can locate other Find My accessories so long as the third-party trackers are built to the specifications that Apple and Google are on. Devices not on the new network aren't compatible and will not work. Third-party tag manufacturers like Chipolo and Motorola are reportedly committing future releases to the new standard, which means the iOS feature will also detect forthcoming models.

Android devices have been capable of detecting Bluetooth trackers for some time, and Google is currently rolling out its long-awaited Find My Device upgrade to smartphones. Thanks to the Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers specification, it’ll work in conjunction with Apple’s network.

Part of iOS 17.5

There is more to iOS 17.5 than just the security patch. 

First, it’s introducing a dynamic wallpaper celebrating the LGBTQ+ community just in time for Pride Month. Second, the company is adding a new game called Quartile to Apple News Plus. It’s sort of like Scrabble, where you have to make up words using small groups of letters. 

Moreover, Apple News Plus subscribers can download audio briefings, entire magazine issues, and more for offline enjoyment. When you're back online, the downloaded content list “will automatically refresh.”

Besides these, 9To5Mac has confirmed even more changes like the Podcasts widget receiving support for dynamic colors. This alters the color of the box to match a podcast’s artwork. The publication also confirms the existence of Repair State, a “special hibernation mode” that lets people send in their iPhone for service without disabling the Find My connection. 

To install iOS 17.5, head over to your iPhone’s Settings menu. Go to General then Software Update to receive the patch. And be sure to check out TechRadar's list of the best iPhone for 2024.

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Windows 11’s Copilot AI just took its first step towards being an indispensable assistant for Android – but Google Gemini hasn’t got anything to worry about yet
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Microsoft’s Copilot AI could soon help Windows 11 users deal with texting on their Android smartphone (and much more besides in the future).

Windows Latest noticed that there’s a new plug-in for Copilot (the recently introduced add-ons that bring extra functionality to the AI assistant), which is reportedly rolling out to more people this week. It’s called the ‘Phone’ plug-in – which is succinct and very much to the point.

As you might guess, the plug-in works by leveraging the Phone Link app that connects your mobile to your Windows 11 PC and offers all sorts of nifty features therein.

So, you need to have Phone Link app up and running before you can install the Copilot Phone plug-in. Once that’s done, Windows Latest explains that the abilities you’ll gain include being able to use Copilot to read and send text messages on your Android device (via the PC, of course), or look up contact information.

Right now, the plug-in doesn’t work properly, mind you, but doubtless Microsoft will be ironing out any problems. When Windows Latest tried to initiate a phone call, the plug-in didn’t facilitate this, but did provide the correct contact info, so they could dial themselves.

The fact that this functionality is very basic looking right now means Google will hardly be losing any sleep – and moreover, this isn’t a direct rival for the Gemini AI app anyway, as it works to facilitate managing your Android device on your PC desktop.

Expect far greater powers to come in the future

Microsoft has previously teased the kind of powers Copilot will eventually have when it comes to hooking up your Windows 11 PC and Android phone together. For example, the AI will be able to sift through texts on your phone and extract relevant information (like the time of a dinner reservation, if you’ve made arrangements via text).

Eventually, this plug-in could be really handy, but right now, it’s still in a very early working state as noted.

While it’s for Android only for the time being, the Phone plug-in for Copilot should be coming to iOS as well, as Microsoft caters for iPhones with Phone Link (albeit in a more limited fashion). Still, this isn’t confirmed, but we can’t imagine Microsoft will leave iPhone owners completely out in the cold when it comes to AI features such as this.

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OpenAI’s big Google Search rival could launch within days – and kickstart a new era for search
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When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, it set off alarm bells at Google HQ about what OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool could mean for Google’s lucrative search business. Now, those fears seem to be coming true, as OpenAI is set for a surprise announcement next week that could upend the search world forever.

According to Reuters, OpenAI plans to launch a Google search competitor that would be underpinned by its large language model (LLM) tech. The big scoop here is the date that OpenAI has apparently set for the unveiling: Monday, May 13.

Intriguingly, that’s just one day before the mammoth Google I/O 2024 show, which is usually one of the biggest Google events of the year. Google often uses the event to promote its latest advances in search and AI, so it will have little time to react to whatever OpenAI decides to reveal the day before.

The timing suggests that OpenAI is really gunning for Google’s crown and aims to upstage the search giant on its home turf. The stakes, therefore, could not be higher for both firms.

OpenAI vs Google

OpenAI logo on wall

(Image credit: Shutterstock.com / rafapress)

We’ve heard rumors before that OpenAI has an AI-based search engine up its sleeve. Bloomberg, for example, recently reported that OpenAI’s search engine will be able to pull in data from the web and include citations in its results. News outlet The Information, meanwhile, has made similar claims that OpenAI is “developing a web search product”, and there has been a near-constant stream of whispers to this effect for months.

But even without the direct leaks and rumors, it has been clear for a while that tools like ChatGPT present an alternative way of sourcing information to the more traditional search engines. You can ask ChatGPT to fetch information on almost any topic you can think of and it will bring up the answers in seconds (albeit sometimes with factual inaccuracies). ChatGPT Plus can access information on the web if you’re a paid subscriber, and it looks like this will soon be joined by OpenAI’s dedicated search engine.

Of course, Google isn’t going to go down without a fight. The company has been pumping out updates to its Gemini chatbot, as well as incorporating various AI features into its existing search engine, including AI-generated answers in a box on the results page.

Whether OpenAI’s search engine will be enough to knock Google off its perch is anyone’s guess, but it’s clear that the company’s success with ChatGPT has prompted Google to radically rethink its search offering. Come next week, we might get a clearer picture of how the future of search will look.

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Google is working on a faster Android setup process that uses Wi-Fi and a cable
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Setting up your Android phone might become much faster in the near future. Industry insider Assemble Debug recently dove into the code of Google’s Data Restore Tool and shared his findings with Android Authority. He found evidence within the files of a potential tool referred to as “MultiTransportD2dTransport” as well as a line of text that reads “Copying using cable and Wi-Fi for fastest speed”. 

Putting two and two together, it appears Google could one day allow users to move data from an old phone to a new one using a Wi-Fi and cable connection simultaneously. Doing so would make the transfer process much faster – at least in theory. We don’t know exactly how much faster data transfers will become when using a wired and wireless connection simultaneously. Assemble Debug couldn’t find a whole lot of information in the files. 

He did, however, discover another line of text stating: “Want to speed things up?” This seems to hint that the faster speeds will be optional. If someone prefers to use the slower method of just connecting a cable between the devices, they will still have the choice.

New restoration tool

Another feature called Restore Anytime was also unearthed from the Data Restore Tool files, but the information surrounding it is rather confusing. 

Looking at the screenshot in the article, users can easily send over photos, contacts, text messages, and more from an old Android smartphone to a newer device. You don’t have to worry about losing any data or perform a factory reset on the older hardware. Nothing will be overwritten. And it even works when transferring from iPhone to Android, so long as the former still has its charging cable.

Here is where the confusion lies. Android Authority claims the donor phone can only send data without incident if it’s already been used to transfer files to your current device. If you try to send files to brand new hardware, you will have to first erase all the data on the recipient phone before moving forward. However, the article contradicts this by stating you can transfer data to new devices “at any point.” 

It’s a strange feature. Perhaps Google has yet to create a clear set of parameters for Restore Anytime. That would explain why the restrictions are so confusing. Or maybe the tech giant is simply experimenting with tech it has no intention of releasing. It’s hard to say for sure, but hopefully, Restore Anytime will launch in some form. Being able to move swaths of data to recently purchased smartphones without hindrances or resetting sounds very helpful.

While we have you, check out TechRadar's list of the best Android phones for 2024.

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Samsung’s best customization app for Galaxy phones is now on Google Play
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Samsung’s Good Lock app has recently been spotted on the Google Play Store hinting at a wider release. Good Lock, if you’re not familiar with it, is a customization app exclusive to Galaxy smartphones. It allows users to decorate various aspects of their device with the help of “modules”. These modules can be used to apply new themes, change the lock screen, revamp the keyboard, and more. The software has been around since 2016 and is a favorite among Samsung enthusiasts.

Initially spotted by several users on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), Good Lock on the Play Store is currently sitting in Early Access. You can’t even find the app on the digital storefront unless you have a direct link to the listing page. Reports state you can only download the software on a Galaxy phone. 9To5Google in their coverage says you’ll see a line of text informing you that your device is not compatible if you try this.

It appears the app doesn’t work with jailbroken hardware either. We managed to download Good Lock on our jailbroken tablet, but when we tried to launch it, the app immediately crashed. The instability is probably due to the fact that Good Lock on Google Play is still under development.

Missing modules

No one knows if the Google Play version of Good Lock will have all of the same modules as the one found on the Galaxy Store. However, it’ll at least house one – One Hand Operation Plus. This module lets you create custom gesture controls. For example, a long swipe to the right launches the Quick Tools menu while swiping diagonally to the upper right opens the notification panel. Judging by the fact One Hand Operation has its own listing page, modules may be separate downloads.

At the time of this writing, it’s unknown when Good Lock will exit Early Access. Samsung may be doing some testing before committing to a formal launch. If it does come out soon, we could see more Galaxy Store-exclusive apps make their way to the Play Store. There aren’t many exclusive options, although there are a few such as Samsung’s Edge Panels and Camera Assistant.

We reached out to the tech giant asking when the app will become widely available and if it plans to expand its availability to non-Galaxy phones. They most likely won’t allow this, but you never know.

Until then, check out TechRadar's list of the best Samsung phones for 2024.

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Google Photos will soon fix your average videos with a single ‘enhance’ tap
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While there are plenty of video editing tools built into smartphones, it can take some skill to pull off an edit that's pleasing to the eye. But Google Photos looks set to change that.

By digging into an upcoming version of the Photos app, Android Authority contributor and code-diver Assemble Debug found a feature called “Enhance your videos”, and with a bit of work, got it up and running. As one would guess from the name, the feature is used to enhance videos accessed via the Photos app in a single tap.

Enhance your videos can automatically adjust brightness, contrast, color saturation and other visual parameters for a selected video in order to deliver an edited version that should look better than the original, at least in the eyes of Google.

While this feature isn’t official yet, it may be somewhat familiar to Google Photos users, as there’s already an option to enhance photos in the web and mobile versions of the service. In my experience, the enhance option works rather well, though it’s far from perfect and can overbake its enhancements.

But it makes sense for Google to extend this enhancement function to videos, especially in the TikTok era; do go and check out the TechRadar TikTok for news, views and reactions to the latest tech.

One neat thing about Enhance your video, according to Android Authority, is that all the processing happens on-device, thereby bypassing the need for an internet connection and cloud-based processing. Whether this will work on older phones without AI-centric chipsets remains to be seen.

Given that Assemble Debug got the Enhance your video feature up and running, it looks like it could be nearing an official rollout. We can expect to hear more about this and other upcoming Google features, as well as Android 15, at Google I/O 2024, which is set to kick off on May 14.

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OneDrive finally catches up to Google Drive and iCloud with an offline mode – here’s how to set it up
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Microsoft OneDrive has finally introduced a feature long considered a staple of Google Drive and iCloud: an offline mode. The mode will be rolled out to students and professionals from today onwards, allowing users to save and edit work whether they have an internet connection or not. 

Offline mode for the web version of OneDrive will now let you open your files in the various sections of the program, like your shared folder and meeting views, as well as edit your documents, rename them, and sort them – all without needing an internet connection. 

All these changes will be ‘saved’ offline and implemented once you regain internet connectivity with your changes synced to the cloud. Files will be marked as ‘available offline’ as they are in Google Drive. 

How to set it up

If you want to use the new offline mode for OneDrive, you’ll need to install the OneDrive app on your Windows or Mac device. Once you’ve done that, you need to head over to OneDrive on your web browser of choice. 

You should be prompted to complete the one-time setup for offline mode, and voila! You’re all set! You should bear in mind that there are limitations on what you can and cannot do with offline mode at present. As MSPoweruser reports, offline mode only includes support if you have 250,000 files or fewer – hopefully, you do! – and the feature is currently only supported for OneDrive for work and school (although a wider rollout is presumably in the works). 

While long overdue, this is a great chance for Onedrive users who have to work on the go and make last-minute changes to work, and it helps take the stress off those unfortunate times when your Wi-Fi crashes and you worry about losing all your progress! Hopefully, this will tempt more people to try the file management program – now that it’s finally up to speed with basically every other alternative. 

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