Google announces slew of AI advances, including a personal AI assistant
coming soon
[May 20, 2026] By
KAITLYN HUAMANI
Google will soon unleash a wealth of new artificial intelligence-powered
tools and systems, including an AI assistant that will help users by
proactively performing tasks on their behalf.
“Agentic” AI, the recent buzzword of choice for tech firms, was a
central focus of Google's annual developers conference, Google I/O. The
upcoming AI agent, Gemini Spark, was one of many of the company's
announcements from the conference Tuesday.
“We are firmly in our agentic Gemini era,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said
Tuesday before a packed amphitheater near the company’s Mountain View,
California, headquarters. “I’ve played around with all sorts of agents
and you can really see the potential, but it’s still early days when it
comes to making agents easy to use, super secure and truly helpful.”
Google and its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., have poured billions
into AI development. Its top finance executive said on a call with
investors in late April that this year’s capital expenditures may climb
as high as $190 billion. But the investment seems to be paying off, with
its quarterly earnings showing strong growth. The stock has climbed
another 11% since the report last month.
Pichai said during the keynote address that the Gemini app had 400
million monthly active users last year, but that usership has now
surpassed 900 million, more than doubling in a year.
The latest version of Gemini is here
Google's latest family of models, Gemini 3.5, is rolling out Tuesday to
billions of global users beginning with Gemini 3.5 Flash. The Flash
model is focused on speed, and Google says 3.5 Flash is its strongest
agentic and coding model yet, but it's also about four times faster than
some competitors.
This model is now the default for the Gemini app and “AI mode” on Google
search. The company is also working on the 3.5 version of Gemini Pro,
which it says it's using internally and expects to launch next month.
Gemini 3.5 was developed with new, more advanced safety training and
mitigations, meaning its models are less likely to generate harmful
content or to mistakenly refuse to answer safe queries, the company
said.
Google also announced a new model, Gemini Omni, which will enable users
to create high-quality video by making a query with any input, be it
text, images, videos and audio. The video Omni creates can then be
edited easily though a conversation with the model. Users will
eventually be able to create images and audio with Omni, but there were
no details about when those features will be rolled out.
The company said Omni's videos will appear more realistic than videos
created by other models because of its understanding of forces like
gravity, kinetic energy and fluid dynamics.
Gemini Omni Flash, the first of the Omni family, is launching Tuesday
for Google Al Plus, Pro and Ultra subscribers through the Gemini app and
Google Flow. Beginning this week, it will be available at no cost on
YouTube Shorts and YouTube Create App.
All videos created with Omni will include Google's imperceptible digital
watermark, SynthID, but Google is also adding content credentials
verification to the Gemini app. This tool determines if content like
photo or video was created by AI or captured with a phone camera and
edited with AI tools. It will be available in search in Chrome in the
coming months. Google also announced AI companies Open AI, Kakao and
Eleven Labs are adopting its SynthID technology to more of their
AI-generated content.
A 24/7 agent and wearable AI
Powered by Gemini 3.5, Gemini Spark will be able to complete mundane,
routine tasks like sorting through meeting notes, emails and chats and
then creating a document with the biggest takeaways and to-dos. Unlike
other available agents, Spark is based in the cloud, so it continues
working in the background even when users shut their laptops or lock
their phones.
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Attendees pose for photos before the keynote presentation at a
Google I/O event in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday, May 19, 2026.
(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
The proactive nature of AI agents is what differentiates them from
chatbots, and that has also led to some anxieties about the
technology's power. Gemini Spark is designed to ask for permission
before performing “high-stakes” tasks like sending an email or
making a purchase, the company said.
Select testers will have access to the agent beginning Tuesday, and
the company plans to roll out the beta mode to U.S.-based
subscribers to its Google AI Ultra tier.
Later this summer, Gemini Spark will operate directly within Chrome,
the company said.
Among the many AI-centric announcements at the conference was an
update on the long-awaited smart glasses from Google, of which there
will be two kinds: audio glasses that offer spoken help in your ear,
and display glasses that provide information visually. The audio
glasses will come first, with the company expecting them to arrive
later this fall. Users will be able to say “Hey Google” or tap the
side of the frame to access Gemini, which will then assist with
navigation, managing communication on their phone, real-time
translations and other tasks.
Google partnered with Samsung and eyewear brands Gentle Monster and
Warby Parker to create the glasses and gave the first look at two
designs on Tuesday, with sunglasses from Gentle Monster and glasses
from Warby Parker. Those designs will launch as part of the eyewear
brands' full collections later this year, Google said.
More AI in search and shopping
At last year’s conference, the most talked-about development was the
introduction and rollout of “AI mode” on Google’s search engine. The
feature gives users a more conversational answer to their query
before providing relevant links, building on previously implemented
changed how users experience and interact with the platform.
AI mode queries have more than doubled every quarter since its
launch last year, and the tool recently surpassed 1 billion monthly
users, according to Liz Reid, Google's head of search.
The new default model in search will now be Gemini 3.5 Flash and the
company is introducing what it calls an intelligent search box. This
change, which Reid says is the biggest upgrade to the search box in
25 years, means the box will adapt to accommodate longer queries and
it can help users write out their questions with AI-powered
suggestions instead of traditional autocomplete.
Users can also search using multiple modalities, using text, images,
video, files and even Chrome tabs as search inputs. The new search
box is starting its roll out Tuesday in all countries and languages
where AI mode is currently available.
The company also announced a new tool, the
Universal Cart, which it called “a truly intelligent shopping cart.”
It works across merchants and across services so users can add
things to their cart while browsing Google search, chatting with
Gemini, watching YouTube, or reading emails in Gmail. The cart then
runs on Gemini models to go to work as soon as an item is placed in
the cart, looking for deals and price drops, providing price history
information and alerting users when something comes back in stock.
The Universal Cart tool will be available to users on search and the
Gemini app this summer, with YouTube and Gmail to follow.
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Associated Press Writer Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California
contributed to this story.
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