Google is bringing generative AI to your text messages and phone wallpaper
Google (GOOG, GOOGL) is bringing generative AI to its Android phones, rolling out new capabilities for text messaging with a feature called Magic Compose.
Launching later this summer as a Beta release, Magic Compose is meant to help you personalize your texts in the Messages app, allowing you to make your missives sound more concise, professional, or, weirdly, Shakespearean.
In one example, Google shows a user writing a note asking another person if they want to get dinner. They then tap the Magic Compose button and are able to choose between different styles of chatting.
For instance, if you want your dinner request to sound casual, you can select the “Chill” option and ask “You down for some grub?” There are also options to make your text sound lyrical or exciting. Google says it will offer six types of speech out of the gate.
It’s not just Messages either. Google is also adding generative AI to its Android’s smartphone wallpaper. Now when you open up the wallpaper customization screen, there will be an AI option that you can use to quickly change up your home screen’s style.
One example Google provided included choosing a city by the bay in a post-impressionist style. The app then popped out a painted image of San Francisco in pastel.
The company also debuted new Android 14 capabilities including the ability to customize your lock screen and make cinematic wallpapers out of still photos. The option allows you to take a standard image and, with on-device machine learning, turn it into a moving, 3D-scene that changes when you tilt or unlock your phone. That feature will land on Google’s Pixel devices next month.
Google’s rival Microsoft (MSFT) is currently leading the generative AI conversation thanks to its debut of its Bing chatbot in February. Google parent Alphabet, however, has been working on generative AI for years, helping to pioneer the technology behind the software.
But Microsoft’s Bing and other generative AI releases, which come as a result of its partnership with ChatGPT developer OpenAI, have left Google looking flat footed by comparison.
The company is now playing catch up by rolling out a number of new products using generative AI including its Bard chatbot and its generative AI capabilities in its Workspace productivity suite.
By Daniel Howley, tech editor at Yahoo Finance. Follow him @DanielHowley
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