Quick Summary
Google is bringing AI features to its Google Home app, including natural language video search and video feeds to Pixel Watches.
Many of the features are currently US-only but should reach other countries very soon.
Google is bringing some interesting and useful AI features to Google Home, including some clever features for your smart home security cameras.
They are experimental rather than completely finished, but some US users can opt into the Public Preview to try them out now. The rest of us will have to wait a little longer. However, it does sound like they'll be worth waiting for.
One of the most intriguing new features is the combination of AI descriptions and Search Camera History. The former adds detailed descriptions to your clips (if you want it to), and the latter enables you to search for very specific things, such as "did any deliveries come today?"
What to expect from Gemini in Google Home
The new features are powered by Gemini, Google's AI system, and there's plenty more where they came from.
Google also announced "Help me create", which it says is "coming soon" to the Google Home app. The idea is to make it easier to create automations for your smart home.
This could be really good. I use tons of automations for my various smart home things, but setting them up or changing them can be a real pain. With "Help me create", Google will be able to understand things like "remember to lock up at night", "make it seem like someone's home", and "remind me to take out the bins". Once again this is going to reach US Public Preview users first, but a wider launch is imminent.
There's more in the Fall update. Pixel Watch 3 users are the first to get a Nest camera and doorbell feed right to their watch, and Nest doorbell notifications are coming to the Pixel Tablet alongside a "dream clock" that's always on. There's a new Home panel screensaver for the tablet too, and Google TV is getting various tweaks too.
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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
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