The apple blossoms are sprouting, the sun is finally rising before your alarm goes off, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai is wiping down the lenses of his Gemini-powered smart glasses. You know what that means: It’s once again time for Google I/O.
Google is going all out for its annual I/O developer conference, which begins on Tuesday, May 20. The event is taking place at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, just down the road from Google’s headquarters. The keynote starts at 10 am PDT on Tuesday, and as usual, it will be livestreamed.
Expect to hear and see updates about Android 16, the latest on Google’s XR glasses, how AI is changing the search experience, and how the Gemini interface is evolving and making its way onto more of Google’s platforms.
Watch This Space
Google’s keynote address, which should open with remarks from Pichai before the team rolls out all the new stuff, starts Tuesday, May 20, at 10 am PDT (1 pm EDT and 6pm BST). You can watch it on Google’s I/O website or on Google’s YouTube channel. The video feed is also embedded right here at the top of this page. Google is also offering a feed in American Sign Language.
Be sure to tune in on our Google I/O live blog, where WIRED’s team in attendance will be offering up-to-the-minute news updates and analysis of all the announcements. We’ll post a link to the liveblog here once we get closer to the main event.
Beyond the main keynote, there’s a subsequent developer-focused keynote starting at 1:30 pm PDT (4:30 EDT).
What to Expect
So much AI. Really, it’s what we expect the bulk of Tuesday’s keynote to cover. Google has been building out its machine intelligence efforts across all of its platforms, building it into the main search experience, Android’s key features, and the company’s various productivity tools. Remember, it was just one year ago that we first heard about AI Overviews, so we’ll likely get updates on how AI-powered search has grown over the last year, and a roadmap of where it’s going next.
We’ll also hear updates about Gemini, of course, and how the latest model is being used on Android phones. Google has a few projects that are still in their experimental phase—like the next Gemini model, and its new AI Mode for search—and I/O is the venue where Google typically pushes those things into general release.
We already know quite a bit about what’s coming to Android this year, since Google already shared the design changes in Android 16 and the new scam-blocking capabilities of Android phones. We also know there won’t likely be any Pixel or Nest hardware announced at I/O. The new phones and gadgets typically arrive in the fall.
Lastly, we are expecting a big update to Google’s XR efforts. The company showed off Android XR last year, and let us go hands-on (face-on?) with its AI-powered smart glasses. Android XR brings Gemini’s chatbot-style voice interactions to a set of eyeglasses, and incorporates an onboard camera for computer vision. Codenamed Project Moohan, we expect to see an update on where these glasses are in their development cycle, and when they’ll be available for everyone to try.
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