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Along with the Gemini chatbot, Google is working on a next-generation AI assistant that can view the world around you, and provide advice and tips throughout the day. At Google I/O, the company debuted Project Astra, which is focused on creating a “universal AI agent helpful in everyday life,” according to Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.Astra stands out from Google’s Gemini chatbot via its ability to see and converse with users. In a pre-recorded demo, the company showed an employee accessing the AI assistant on a smartphone, pointing its camera at various objects, and asking Gemini to identify or provide details about them.
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Astra correctly identifies what it’s looking at and provides intelligent responses through voice interactions with the user. For example, Astra looks at some computer code on a monitor and explains how it works. The AI assistant also recalls where the user placed her glasses in the office after viewing her workspace. It also looks at a diagram of an IT system on a whiteboard and offers suggestions on how to improve it.
Project Astra identifying Schrödinger’s cat on a whiteboard. (Credit: PCMag/Michael Kan)
Hassabis described Astra as a “multimodal” AI assistant, meaning it can respond to various inputs, such as text, images, audio, and video, making it work more like a human person.
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The company plans on rolling out parts of Project Astra later this year through the Gemini app. Project Astra looks poised to compete with OpenAI’s new GPT-4o AI model, which can also speak and view the world through the user’s smartphone camera. But in GPT-4o’s case, the AI was also able to show degrees of human-like emotion, including laughing at human responses.
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