8:43
Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of David and Nilay both being mysteriously unavailable at the same time, so we've got to fill in. I'm Jay Kastrenakes, executive editor of the Verge. I'm Hayden Field, senior AI reporter at the Verge. And we've got a lot to talk about today. Google I/O just wrapped up 15 minutes ago. It was as long as ever, a nice uh relaxing 2-hour presentation. And um I think they talked about AI for I don't know, about an hour 45 of it. Yep, and the word agents. It was non-stop like every 10 seconds. Agents is the sizzle real word uh of the year. Yes, yes, yes, and we have a lot of that to talk about. Um David unfortunately under the weather. Nilay,
if you're following along on the site, he was live vlogging. He is out in Mountain View. Um so expect more from him. Uh he's he's out there for some fun stuff that we'll have for you, I believe, next week, so stay tuned. Um but for now, we're here to talk about Google I/O and all the big announcements. If you have thoughts, questions, um hit us up in the comments and we'll uh we'll be checking them out. So there was a lot that happened. Uh I it is hard to even know where to start. Um tons of Gemini announcements, some huge announcements for search. There was a big uh a side on shopping, but I do think agents is the buzzword of the year. Everything kind of laddered up to
agents, including, you know, what the shopping stuff, right? Ultimately, that was agents. The search stuff, ultimately, that's agents. Everything seems to be about agents. I'm curious uh Hayden, you spoke to uh folks over there, and you came away with a bunch of thoughts about you know, what they are thinking about what 2026 looks like in terms of what the purpose of AI is. What do you think they are trying to accomplish here? Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like I've been covering agents for years, like since, you know, late 2022 when generative AI was, you know, officially a thing basically with ChatGPT's
release. And I feel like every single year that I've covered them, there's been a different like milestone in each year. So, it's like the first year was the year of ideation in 2023. And then the next year was the year of deployment. Um then we had the year of experimentation. And these are all terms that are coming from like either both users and the leaders. So, it's like this is kind of the vibes that everyone's getting on both sides. And this year I'm really feeling like from all the Google announcements and from like interviewing the CTO of DeepMind and stuff, it's going to be the year of usefulness, like actual usefulness, we hope. We hope they're not out yet.
Yeah, they're not out yet. So, we really don't know. Um but I will say that you know, we've had promises of these things actually being useful and being able to do what they say they're going to do for a really long time. And I'm always really skeptical and it usually happen besides like coding, of course. Um that's where they really shined. But I do think that if anyone's going to make them useful, it's Google because of all the integrations they can seamlessly have with like Docs, Sheets, Gmail, Calendar, everything else. And it looks like they're kind of learning from their mistakes this year because a lot of their announcements they made about agents, they were um you know, not to
say like copying, but kind of copying and like learning from Open Law, um ChatGPT Pulse, um Codex, um Claude Co-work. Like they were really taking a lot of the best features of all these competitors and just like kind of integrating them into their own agent plans. And I think that's going to work pretty well for them because they're Google and they can easily seamlessly integrate all this stuff into their own tools that we all use every day, like photos, Gmail, etc. And their new two agents that they talking about the most, the daily brief and Gemini Spark, I think are going to be pretty I think they're finally listening to like what people actually want with AI agents, which has been a problem in the past.
Like, it's like, do you really need it to like scour 50 websites to find the perfect pair of shoes, or do you just want it to like give you a daily briefing on what your day looks like and like how long it's going to take you to get to point A to point B, and then maybe help plan an event that you're planning, like a wedding or a block party. We saw examples like that in the stream. So, and in the report or briefing called the day before. So, that's kind of what I saw. I think they're at least hoping to make this the actual year of usefulness for AI agents, but I can't confirm that until we actually test them. I mean, this is what's so complicated, right? They are starting to have these abilities, but I
actually think that finding ways to put them to use, figuring out things that I do want to offload to AI, and finding things that I trust AI to handle correctly, like, that's actually a really big gap that, you know, I things like daily brief are like baby's first AI thing. Like, it you can maybe trust it. It's really, really low stakes. If it tells you the wrong thing, like, you're probably going to know. It's not necessarily giving it full access to your computer like you've done with Open Claw. On the other hand, they're also launching their own version of that, um, which is uh Gemini Spark, which, um, and you don't have to go out and buy a
Mac mini like with Open Claw. It'll run in the cloud, but they're also going to give it access to your Mac if you have the Mac app. And so, it'll be able to do those uh Open Claw things and run wild with your stuff. Um, maybe not as well. They said that you have to like specifically choose which files it has access to each time, but I it's really interesting. Everything that Google is trying to do is to make this more useful, but they're making it more useful with agents, but they are trying to find the specific spots, like with daily brief and like with search, where it will just kind of automatically do these AI things for you, so you don't have to invent them. Right. And there also something I thought was interesting about Spark is that
it, you know, like one of the memes that came out of like all the open clock craze was like, you know, leaving your laptop open 24/7 and like letting agents work for you 24/7 and ever a lot of people in tech were like, "Oh, I can't even sleep. I can't even move away because I'm getting so much, you know, done." Even though that was kind of like a productivity, we don't know if it was like, you know, productivity for productivity's sake or if you know, people were actually accomplishing that much. It kind of depended on who you were. But something interesting about Spark is that it's cloud-based, it can run 24/7 without keeping your laptop open and it can sync across like the web, Android, and iOS. So, I
think it's helpful that Google has so many resources here, so they can just like eat the cost of this and just be like, you know, "Yeah, go ahead and go crazy. Go wild. Run these 24/7. We'll We'll handle it." And you know, obviously, you know, they have subscription plans and everything, but they're actually cutting the cost of two of their or they're introducing a new lower-cost subscription plan for Ultra and then they're cutting the cost of their top-tier Ultra subscription. So, it's like I think they're really trying to compete with everyone here by being like, "Okay, we're Google. We have more resources. We can kind of, you know, temporarily eat some of these costs." And the biggest complaint a lot of
people have had lately about agent stuff is just the speed and the cost. And Google's kind of trying to undercut its competitors in both areas right now. This is true. And um I maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here, but they also had uh Gemini 3.5 flash, a new model, and they mostly emphasized that I it is faster, it is a little bit more efficient, it's lower cost in certain applications. And I think they're seeing this is the area where it impacts them number one, but also the developers, right? If you're paying for this stuff, you know, you uh you've got a budget. You got a budget. You can't be burning through uh
they said there's like a I don't even know. What was it? Over a quadrillion tokens were being uh you know, processed. Like it's And over and a ton of companies were using more than a trillion per Was it month? Um a trillion daily tokens. As a lot of companies honestly. It's And they said that um like I don't know a lot of the startups and like uh you know, smaller company leaders I've been talking to you lately, their biggest complaint has been having to do all these crazy calculations on their side, trying to figure out the recipe for which models they should use. Um you know, triaging some evidence or certain aspects of like plaintiff lawyers good jobs. I don't know enough about plaintiff lawyers' jobs, but the more
complicated aspects. And then they're using the cheap models for the simpler tasks and like refining that ratio all the time. And so Sundar was saying um you know, Gemini 3.5 Flash specifically, it's a big cost saver. It can be half or 1/3 the cost of some of its comparable competitors. And that if you shifted like 80% of your workload as a company to Gemini 3.5 Flash, then you could and you were using a trillion daily tokens, you could save more than $1 billion annually. So that's obviously kind of a cherry-picked example, but still shows, you know, they're listening to people being like, "Hey, we're spending a ton of our time just figuring out how possibly to save some costs." It also shows they know where the
interest in the money is, which is in coding right now. Um th- this is the biggest use case. It is the biggest way that they are going to get corporate customers. And I It is not clear to me that Google's solution has been anybody's favorite. Right, it's Claude, it's cursor. I've seen people in the chat saying that antigravity their harness for agents is not very good. So this is a problem, right? It's they're trying to focus on the stuff with the new flash model. They're trying to speed things up, they're trying to make things more efficient, but coding has not been the area where Google has excelled so far, right? They've been
focused on I think these much more tangible applications because they're Google. They're focused on can they make a model that works really fast when you search for something. And I generally think that they're they're quite good at that compared to I think the alternatives. But as for coding stuff, I you know, I tried I don't even know. I think it was AI studio. Um I shortly after it originally came out and got absolutely nowhere. Whereas, you know, I paid Anthropic $20 for Claude code access and I cannot stop making apps with it. And it's like it I don't need these apps. Like I need to stop. It's not a good use of my time. It's not a good use of tokens. But it's so easy and so capable. And I think
one of the questions here is can they get there? Can they right? They're improving agents, they're improving their harnesses. Can they make it easier for anyone to do this stuff and especially for developers to do this stuff so that they will switch to Google's platform. Yeah, one of the things they announced was like they keep calling it like antigravity 2.0. So like expanding antigravity so that it can just be a like full-on agentic development platform beyond just coding. So they're introducing like a new standalone desktop app which they want to call like a central hub for agent interaction. They're just like really going all in on the marketing here.
Um and you know, just trying to kind of court developers and get them to switch. And so it's interesting like I think the pricing will help there, but you know, like people said like the harness hasn't been that good. So we'll see. And also I remember like I don't know. And when Gemini 3 came out, everyone had temporarily of course as they always do for like a week was like Google won the race. Like it's it's over. And then like a week later or a couple weeks later, you know, Claude kind of stole the thunder with um coding prowess. And then, you know, it held on to that for months in terms of the hype. And so we'll see if the next few models that come out in the 3.5 suite kind of take some of that hype away or not.
So we should talk about those. We should talk about the models. We should talk about some of the Gemini specific updates. So I think the first thing from a consumer perspective is there's like a new design in the Gemini app. Um it's glowy. It's dark mode. Like it's very nice. It's very lovely. I don't think this will improve the AI experience dramatically. Um they're making a big deal out about of about it. Um they're calling the design language neural expressive, which do not think sounds cool. Yeah. It's like a little It's kind of sounds like a something you'd have to like get medicated for. I don't know.
They Yeah, they should have worked on that. Um but you know, behind that is I think a zillion and a half different Gemini updates and new models. Um so we already talked about 3.5 flash. Um 3.5 Pro is coming what this summer or something like that. Uh they're throwing They now have different uh Gemini live conversation modes that they're just shoving into every single product. Um they're making it more accessible within the Gemini app. They're allowing you to have a live conversation with your Gmail account, which is one of the like I don't I get it. I get that you have the technology, you're like, why not? I don't foresee using this. Here's the thing. This Gmail
search is so horrible that maybe I would use it. Like honestly, like it's You're desperate enough. Yeah, yeah. It's the type of thing I would never use if the Gmail search wasn't so bad. But like I can literally be quote searching the title of an email and it won't come up. And yet like I'll go find it myself and it's there. This is when you've hit rock bottom at an airport looking for like a reservation number. You're like, I guess I will talk to it. I believe you actually have to pay. I [snorts] I might have it wrong. I'm not I forget which one it is. They're They're They're adding uh live talking to like Google Docs as well. And for some of them you have to pay for like a hundred bucks a month to
get that feature. And it's like, I don't know if that's the one you needed to pay, Gate. I like Yeah. There's not a lot of them that are and I'm like I was a little surprised by like what's free and what's not. It is I think for Google in particular, it's like Anthropic, I'm like, yeah, they need money. Like I understand. Um with Google, it's like, oh, if you guys have to charge a hundred dollars for these features I don't want, like you're you must be losing a lot. Yeah. But then it's like it's funny cuz some of the more like complex ones are just free, like information agents. Um at part of their search overhaul is offering like information agents to basically just like, you know, the which are supposed to roll out I think to
everyone this summer and they're supposed to do research on your behalf or like alert you kind of like a personal assistant would anytime something happens. So like if you're like watching a certain part of stock market or you're like trying to track the weather or even like flights maybe. They didn't mention flights, but it seems like from what they talked about, like maybe even like flight price dropping. Like you know, things like that it'll monitor for you and just email you when it happens or you know, pings you somehow when it happens. And so that's free. And then also, yeah, the custom experiences and the They were really into the haptic stuff in the app. So Cool. Yeah, they're they're into it. I
don't know All going matters. If maybe if the app is cool enough, uh, the vibe will shift on people's, uh, reaction to non-stop AI. Yeah. Um, so the other big model they announced, and it the other big model they announced is Gemini Omni, which they are calling a model that I believe I'm going to misquote this, but they're saying it's a model that can accept any input and generate any output. Um, and this sounds like a very, very big deal. And yet, despite how big of a deal it is, they are doing it they're giving very little explanation to what this is or why it is or what comes next for it. But my right now, it's basically just a video generation model. And you might think to yourself,
"Hey, don't they already have one called VEO?" And yes, Google has now created a second video generation model, and it is not clear why. Um, but, uh, this new one can accept any kind of inputs. So, you can throw a PDF and some photos and a song at it, and it'll use all of that to generate a video for you. Whereas VEO is just text to video. And I guess their long-term perspective is that they want this model to be, I guess, much more multimodal to a degree that other models are not. Yeah, they want to like combine Gemini's text intelligence with its video and image models. Basically, they're trying to combine everything they already have into one. And also, they just really want to go all in on world models, which is kind of, if you remember, like when
OpenAI canceled Sora, they didn't say they were going to never use it again or like just scrap the whole thing. They said they were going to instead use the research behind the model behind it to develop world models or do world model research. So, this is kind of the new big thing that has been happening for a little while, and Google's leaning all into it, too, with world models, because they think and the CTO of, um, DeepMind said this, too, that this is going to be the next big step to AGI. So, Google DeepMind is one of the only companies I've talked to recently that isn't kind of trying to get away from the AGI term.
They're like all in. They're like, "Yeah, we got to get to AGI and this is how world models." So, yeah, Omni is that for them. They you know, gave a lot of examples like giving it a simple prompt like give me a, you know, claymation explainer of protein folding and then getting a video back and you know, yeah, just covering all the inputs you provide like text, image, video, voice, whatever. And the good news is it's it includes SynthID, so hopefully the videos you output will you'll be able to tell if they're AI-generated, but as we know, people can get around those. It's really interesting because they introduced Omni with this sort of big hype up about world models. And the way I've seen used so far is these sort of
interactive video generation experiences where you kind of just like it's like you move the arrow keys and world generates around you as though you're playing a video game and then the world immediately forgets what is around you because they're not working yet. And it's very cool. And they set this up as though, "Okay, this is world models of the future, so we've created Omni." Is Omni a world model? That's not clear to me. They did not specify that. They told me it was and they said it's critical for the AGI journey. The AGI journey and from two points of view, one is like understanding the world and then
reasoning about it as a big part of intelligence. And then also the fact that like our intelligence is built in this 3D world. So, they think of it as like a way to make their models much smarter because they're they're learning how to interact like physically with the world and eventually like Google hasn't said this, but a lot of times when a company is working on world models, they're sometimes their like unsaid eventual goal is to basically give their AI model a body in the world. Like, you know, it's a way to, you know, create smart robotics systems. So, we'll see. They forgot to mention that.
Actually, okay, actually Sean Hollister on our team got a got an exclusive demo. He went by Mountain View a day or so ago and got a look at so Google Beam, which is the I think current name for Starline, which is their like fancy like 3D video chat service, which I it cost like 25 grand. There are probably a single digit number of them in existence. They're really cool demos and I don't know why anyone would buy them. Um but they showed them a demo where they're making a like 3D fake woman who is, you know, powered by AI. I don't know why. I don't know why but this is There's like it's also like It's happening. With Omni, you can apparently like create a custom avatar
of yourself and drop yourself into like the videos you create, but again, it kind of reminds me of Sora and like why, you know, but Actually, Travis is telling me we can throw to the video for this. Yeah, let's play a clip. first journalist to test out this preview demo with me. Pretty groundbreaking stuff. This is Google Beam, the $25,000 teleconferencing system. It makes it feel like the other person is in the same room. Google wanted to create an AI agent that isn't just text on your screen or a voice in your ear. It's something you can walk up and talk to, too. What am I holding up right now?
Ah, I see now. In your left hand, you have what looks like a transparent phone case with a magnetic ring built in, probably for MagSafe. And in your right, a small circular accessory. Is that a magnetic ring stand or a grip that attaches to it? Yeah, that's right. I'll I'll honest, it's all over the place right now. It does Google things fairly well, pulling up maps, speaking in multiple languages. Because it can see its surroundings, it can answer questions about a book, even recognize a sign language signer, too. Here's another hand sign. Tell me about this one. Oh, I know that one. You're making the sign for I love you.
Yeah, see this is just I don't entirely understand what the end goal is here. Like this is they didn't mention this on stage, and I feel like this is where this starts to get pretty creepy. Yeah, and the fact that like it takes so long to even respond, you know? I mean Yeah, there it's one it's not working that well. I mean it's it's like impressive for what it is, I guess, but I mean it's kind of creepy just thinking about what people are going to eat. Like people already have a lot of really, you know, emotional connections to models, and I feel like this is and then further that. You know, fortunately, you're going to need $25,000 and maybe need to break into their prototype labs in order to get this
experience, but it yeah, I think to your point, like this is on their mind. Once you create this technology, it will get there. But I do think, just to bring it back to the world models, it sounds like this is maybe the next big we're seeing a very small sliver of this right now. But from what you're hearing in the world, right, the world models are the next phase. Yeah, the some of the like biggest AI pioneers launched World Labs. When was that? I think 2024? No, 2025. Like in November last year, and they left where they were, which was a ton of top AI labs to start and go all in on just world models, and the company's called World Labs, and it was kind of like you were describing, like
right now it's basically like using arrows to more [clears throat] like navigate around an AI-generated world, but you know, all the like investors I've been talking to, all the AI leaders I've been talking to in the past year have been all in on World Lock saying this is the way to make models smarter with spatial awareness and then eventually robotics, which is what most AI companies that have models eventually want to do in some way, shape or form. Um, it is going to be really interesting. Right now, um, it is just videos from Google. Uh, but I will say like one of the, you know, I think of a very fun thing for Google.
It's there, uh, they're saying all this stuff is supposed to be available right away. So, we will find out very quickly exactly what it is capable of. Um, so, I look forward to being able to test this stuff out. All right, we got to throw to a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to be talking about search and uh, a lot of the fun stuff they announced that you're able to just immediately try out and use. Support for this show comes from Superhuman. AI tools are everywhere right now, but a lot of them end up creating more work instead of less. You bounce between tabs, rewrite the same thing five different ways, and spend more time
prompting the AI than actually getting things done. Superhuman wants to change that. Superhuman is an AI productivity suite designed to work where you already work. It brings together the intelligence of Grammarly, Coda, and Superhuman Mail into one connected system that helps you write more clearly, move faster, and stay focused on what actually matters. Think of it like an AI powered team working alongside you throughout the day. Instead of opening a separate chatbot window every time you need help, Superhuman is built directly into your workflow, whether responding to emails, organizing ideas, collaborating on documents, or managing projects. It's AI
that works where you work, however you work. You can unleash your superhuman potential with AI that meets you where you work. Learn more at superhuman.com. That's superhuman.com. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard, it can be really scary, too. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will even work. But here's a better thought. What if it did all work? What if your instincts were actually right all along? Shopify wants to help you get there. They're the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide and nearly 10% of all e-commerce in the US. From established brands like Allbirds and
Heinz to companies just getting started. Their design tools make it simple to create the exact online presence you're envisioning with hundreds of ready-to-use templates available. And with built-in marketing tools, you can launch full email and social campaigns in just a few clicks. So you can connect with customers wherever they are. It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. You can sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/vergecast. You can go to shopify.com/vergecast. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know that every hire counts. The time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right
candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. It's updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hires find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting
buried in resumes, you get a focused short list that actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com/track. All right, we're back. It's time to talk search. Time to talk vibe coding. And yeah, there's a lot Um so it's very interesting. Google search is sort of a big thing for them and search ended up getting like smushed in the middle of this presentation because as uh Sundar Pichai told us, apparently they're they decided 10 years ago that they're an AI-first company. I missed that announcement. I don't know. Um
Feels like more of a slightly more recent thing than that. a big deal out of it. He was like, "It was 10 years ago that we pivoted our entire company to be AI-first and we were the first to do it or something." And I was like, "Okay, yeah, but you're still a search company, too, though." Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and so all of the stuff that they are building, though, does end up in search. And they kind of came out today to try to make a very big splash with search saying, you know, "We're we're kind of completely overhauling it." And that includes just like infusing AI into every corner of search. And it's very interesting because I feel like a lot of what they're announcing may maybe already exists today. I Very recently I've been doing searches,
I would say, particularly on my phone and I get I start reading stuff and I'm like there are no links here. Like I am just reading an AI result now. And it keeps forcing me to have a conversation. You know, and I'm like I have to exit out. I'm like no, I'm like trying to scroll. But yeah, I mean there's a lot They said it was also the biggest um overhaul to their search bar or like search box in 25 years, and it was a little like they basically said it they were going to make it bigger and allow for longer queries and then automatically take you into AI mode, which is kind of what I feel like is already happening when we use it, but I guess it's going to be for everyone instead of just some. I Yeah, it's
unclear how much they're just sort of saying like no, this is official now. We want you to think of us as being in this different format. And I think that is probably part of what's happening here. It's really interesting. Google for many years now has been going out there saying like, you know, in you know, younger users and people in you know, certain countries they actually like they don't use properly formatted search queries. They don't just say like Indian food. They say, "All right, I want a place that's open during these hours, that's great for my parents, and that serves, you know, Indian cuisine, and that's near." And it's like I'm like who does that? Who on earth makes a search query like
that? Like that's that's nuts. And I will acknowledge like the more that they have infused AI into stuff, and the more that I have gotten comfortable using ChatGPT and Gemini and all these other things, the more that like I feel like I'm losing the ability to make a like succinct search query, and I'm like I'm going to search for something crazy and specific because it will more often than not get me a slightly better result. And so this is what they're saying. They're like, "Now the search bar you can somehow you can add Chrome tabs to it. You can throw in files and photos." And yeah, put it in a giant sentence. And uh And you can like also get back. This was what I thought was really different. You can get back a
custom widgets and visualizations of your search. So like if you're searching for how black hole works, obviously reading about it, it's a little hard to parse, but it can make you a custom visualization or custom widget or like you know, so that's really interesting. Like it will automatically decide when I think when you need something like that and then deliver it to you and it'll be custom made for your specific query. It won't be like every time anyone searches for a black hole, that's what's going to happen. This is like both fascinating and terrifying. Yeah. Like on one hand, I sort of admire the fact that Google, right? Like they have the I don't know, one of the most lucrative products in existence with Google
search. It is a an interface used by a zillion people on the planet and I think, you know, famously when you have a product that is that widely used, you have to be really cautious in making changes to it cuz there's backlash and I think Google has actually in the past couple years been really aggressive at making changes to imbue search into or imbue AI into search and um you know, it is creating these richer experiences where they're they're saying, "Okay, you search for how does a black hole work? You know what Google thinks is a better experience than giving you 10 links about it is we'll just generate an interactive for you that just shows you it." And they're also going to let you vibe code like mini apps within search. So
like if you want to create a fitness tracker or something with like your calendar connected, you can do that directly within search and then come back to it. So it's not a one-time thing. So they want you to for things that you search all the time, like habitual searches, they want you to have kind of like a landing page that stays the same, but with updates for those which I think is interesting because I do search for the same things all the time and it's like, you know, that would be it's just interesting how they're thinking about this because yeah, it's totally different and I also I'm worried that some of these things sound really cool, but some of them sound a little much. And I'm wondering if it's going to turn
out to be like a Windows 11 situation when Microsoft like forced Copilot to every single area of the operating system and people really, you know, did not like that. It's funny. I was also just thinking about how OpenAI was like no more side quests. And then Google comes out and they're like, "We're putting AI in Docs. We're putting black hole widgets in search." Like every single thing has some weird new way to Gemini. It's because Google has the money to do some side quests. Dude, they really do. And they have the data and they have you everywhere. Yeah, it's a lot. And I think it's particularly interesting watching what they're doing in search because search, like at the
end of the day, that is the most used product. And they are trying to make sure you keep using it and use more of it. And these changes are very impressive. Like you think about the black hole one, it's like, you know what that interactive is like? Assuming it's accurate, which it has to be accurate every single time someone makes that search because they're generating it again and again and again, which honestly seems a little bit inefficient. Um, that probably means that all of the links you would click to read about how black holes work aren't getting clicked. And so, you know, Nilay and David have talked about this at length. Uh, right, this is how the web dies if Google if
Google is the end, right? If you just search on Google and that's it and it can do everything for you, that's the end. And increasingly they're building so much capability into Google. Like Look, I'm not going to say it's not impressive. It's it's it's very impressive that they can instantaneously build a little widget for you. Um, it's also a little scary. I constantly am thinking about like how things could go wrong as an AI reporter, obviously, and I'm just thinking about like when we had when AI Overviews were released, obviously, it was giving like a lot of dangerous advice. Some of it was like kind of funny dangerous, like putting
glue on pizza, and some of it was not at all funny at like, you know, telling you what you should do when you're pregnant and it's wrong. Like things like that like people could really believe. And I'm what is wondering like when is it going to give like a diagram for how to make a bomb, you know? Like I just really feel like there's so many like we'll see what they do here and like I always red team this type of thing myself to see like the messed up things I can do and see where the safety processes lack. But I'm definitely going to be doing that for this because I feel like there's so many things that it could just be like I don't know, I can imagine like kids using it and then it like gives you a diagram of something
inappropriate or like a widget to explain something else and it's like you know, I don't know. We're going to have to red team this for sure because it'll be interesting to see like where their safety guardrails um fall short. And the other thing I thought was really interesting was AI Overviews, they were really like locked in on trying to save their reputation from and Yeah. get away from the embarrassment there. They were like everyone uses AI Overviews. They were saying that it was like Yeah. It's It's so funny. They're like, "Look how many What is it? Like a billion people now 2.5 billion monthly users. Yeah, okay. You know why? Like if you put literally anything on google.com, it
instantly gets that many people. Like that's You can't impress IT. YEAH, YOU CAN'T opt out. SO IT'S LIKE I MEAN, I use it, but do I want to? Like I Right. Sometimes I click into AI Overviews by accident. I'm like, I thought that was the button for the links. And also it's like there no matter what, honestly. Like it's like even if you don't click into it, it's there. So I don't know. And I just thought it was funny how they were really like locking into that. They were like, "It's been a revelation," they said, "our biggest upgrade to search ever." And that is a revelation for google.com because they keep more people, which Yep.
very good for business, not so good for literally every other business that um you know wants you to click the link. Yeah. Uh I mean, this is what people in the chat are talking about this, too. Um Simply said me says, "I feel that this is very complicated for the current web." It's like, "Yep, that's it." That's the That sums it up. Yeah. Um They're taking the current web and they are remaking it on, you know, uh on google.com. Um Okay, so a bunch of other things that they announced that uh are a little more consumer-facing. Um One, another vibe coding thing that I'm excited to try out in Google AI Studio, which is one of 500 products uh they have that allows you to use AI.
Um they're adding the ability to prompt uh and create They're adding the ability to vibe code Android apps. You'll be able to test them out in your browser, send them to your phone. I think eventually you'll be able to have friends and family uh test them out with you. I think some point down the road they can make it onto the Play Store. Um This is cool. Have we were on this show like what, last summer talking about our vibe coder projects? Have you uh experimented Yeah, I have. I feel like it's been fun. They've definitely gotten better. And like it depen- It's been fun to see how like different tools stack up, you know?
Um I will say like I have fun vibe coding stuff and it's like a really fun product, but I like usually don't use it again after cuz sometimes it'll break or like it's not that use- like, you know? So, I think it's fun to do, but I still haven't found anything that like I'm using constantly on my own. Um you know, besides like just a one-off thing or I come back to a couple times. No, this has been my problem, too. I think I have absolutely abandoned more totally complete and functional vibe coder projects than I have continued to use. And I There are some that I've continued to use. I made a This is using Claude. Uh I made a notes app that I really love. I'm you know, tinkering with an email app
that I've started using. Super it's it's super impressive, but it's like just because you can make stuff doesn't mean that it is good and worth using. I have not tried making anything for mobile yet. And so and I'm an Android user. So I'm excited to be able to tinker with this. See if it works. I But I also have no idea what I'm going to make, right? Like I there's The ability to make it doesn't mean that I need to make something. I feel like I have to just like, you know, like as I go about my day, like just jot down like the my pain points and like then go from there. Because
when I sit down and think about what I should make, it never comes up. But like during the day when I'm really annoyed with something, that's when I think of it. Like I remember David Vibe coded like a really cool tracker for his baby when he had his new baby. And then like, I don't know. I like one of my Someone I interviewed Vibe coded a good reads alternative for his wife because she was really annoyed that like there was no way to say you only read some of a book, I think, without seeming like you were kind of a failure. Like you couldn't like I don't know what it was cuz I don't use good reads, but it was basically like if you stop a book, it's kind of like, oh, it's always on your
shelf forever. But like what if you just don't like the book and you don't want to keep going? And so he like created a way to make it like less embarrassing or whatever if you didn't finish. I like that. Yeah, you can feel good about throwing it down because you Listen, you're decisive about not liking it. I That is the thing though, right? It's like it's it's very specific in this stuff that like I don't know. I In the moment it sounds good. Will it actually sound good later? So I think this is like a nice thing for them to offer. But again, Google's Vibe coding tools have not been the best so far. So I think it'll be really interesting what is possible.
This also plays into They announced last week during the Android show that they're bringing Vibe coded widgets or they're not even calling it vibe code. It's like prompted AI generated widgets as just like a general consumer feature to a bunch of phones in Android 17. Um and I think the question for all these is like, okay, what can it actually access on your phones? Um what can it actually do? Cuz they keep being like, you can have a widget that will generate recipes for you. And I'm like, why do I want that? And will they be good, you know?
Yeah. It's like, I don't want just like a bunch of recipes on my home screen. This doesn't make Yeah, I think I have zero times cooking. Like, I'm Right, this is I've got a hookup for that. Um so, that's one of the big things. They also announced a new app called Pix, which is AI prompted image editing. Um it lets you prompt to edit specific portions of an image. Um the demos that we saw were okay. Yeah. And when the demo is okay, I'm a little skeptical, you know? Yeah. Um And the other thing they talked a little bit about, and this is actually a very big deal, is um I think they're expanding their watermarking tools that they did into more places.
Uh they're expanding uh the ability to check on uh C2PA credentials. So, they're doing more to help people find out when images and video uh are AI generated or AI edited. Um A funny thing that uh Jess Weatherbed on our team pointed out to me is uh Google's approach to this is want to find out if AI was used to create that? Use our AI to find out. Uh like, you it seems like you have to use like an AI system in search or Gemini in order to get that. And uh can you trust it? We'll we'll find out. Yeah, and the fact that like you do have to like there's some friction there, you know? So, we'll see. At least they got um like Nvidia and OpenAI I think to sign on. So, you know, hopefully it spreads, but I don't know. There's always ways to get
around these things is the hard part. So, I mean, anything's better than nothing, but I want to mention really quickly before we go to break. They also did show that a teaser of the Android XR glasses that are coming later this year. They're Warby Parker collab and their Gentle Monster's collab, Gentle Monster collab. Just some like you know, some regular looking sunglasses with some cameras and speakers in them. They did a demo on stage that showed Gemini you know, interact from the glasses interacting with allegedly things on the phone, things on a computer, too. I think it was like very impressive. They even like kind of celebrated that the demo actually worked. And I will say these are the least ugly
camera glasses I've seen. Like, I've seen some pretty ugly ones and these are more chic, I will say. So, good collab. It is interesting. Like, at the end of the day, these it's not clear that this is doing that much different from the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, but if you take the Ray-Ban Meta glasses and give them access to all of the personal data that Google has access to on you, they will in fact be more capable. So, Google is going to have an advantage there and we're going to find out more about that later this year. They did not have a lot of concrete details to share. All right, we got to take a break. When we get back, we're going to talk a little bit about Google's I think grandiose wrap-up to the event and Hayden's been covering the Muskovi
Altman trial and we're going to hear a little bit about that as well. Support for this show comes from Klaviyo. There are only so many hours in a day and Klaviyo's two powerful AI agents can make sure your team spends them on big things. The first Klaviyo AI agent turns your marketing ideas into reality instantly. Describe what you want. A holiday campaign, a VIP re-engagement series, and Klaviyo builds it instantly. Email, SMS, and push, all coordinated, on brand, grounded in 14 years of Klaviyo marketing data. Nothing goes live without your say-so. The other Klaviyo AI agent keeps your customers happy at any hour. Brand trained to answer questions, make product
recommendations, and handle orders and returns. No hold music. Marketing that launches instantly. Support that never sleeps. Join more than 193,000 brands, including Away, Patrick Ta, and Dollar Shave Club, already growing with Klaviyo, the autonomous B2C CRM. Get started at k l a v i y o.com. Support for this show comes from Keeper Security. What do you think your most important items are? You'd probably say your keys, wallet, and a phone in some order. But what if you were wrong? What if the thing that's the most important to you is your data? It's the reason why bad actors do whatever they can to try and get their hands on it, and it's on you to protect it. That's what Keeper Security is all
about. Keeper is a password manager and the simplest way to take control of your online life. It creates strong, unique passwords for all your accounts, stores them securely in one place, and logs you in automatically across all your devices. From your phone to your laptop, from your tablet to your browser, Keeper works quietly, so you can just get on with your day. Right now, Keeper is offering our listeners 60% off personal and family plans at keepersecurity.com/verge. This offer's only for podcast listeners. That's keepersecurity.com/verge for 60% off personal and family plans. Make sure you use our link so they know we sent you. keepersecurity.com/verge Support for the show comes from Framer.
Framer is an enterprise-grade no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Miro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS with everything you need for great SEO, not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated AB testing, your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your.com from day one. So, whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages, or migrate your full.com, Framer has programs for startups, scale-ups, and large enterprises to make going from idea to live site as easy and fast as possible. Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/verge
for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/verge for 30% off. framer.com/verge Rules and restrictions may apply. All right, we're back. I just want to say those of you in the comments, I see you. I hear you shouting out the thunder round and I appreciate it. The fight continues. One day, we will bring it back. All right. So, to wrap up, I want to talk about how Google concluded the keynote, which really interesting. I didn't go back to check this, but every time I can remember, they bring Sundar back out to bookend the event.
And you know, he says some nice words and waves everybody away. Um, this time they brought out Demis Hassabis who leads Google DeepMind and he closed out the event with some really grandiose thoughts about AI and I'm just going to throw to the clip here cuz I want everyone to hear what he had to say. Cutting-edge research and products will help unlock AGI's incredible potential for the benefit of the entire world. When we look back at this time I think we will realize that we were standing in the foothills of the singularity. It will be a profound moment for humanity. This technology will be a force multiplier for human ingenuity and usher in a new golden age of scientific discovery and progress improving the lives of everyone everywhere.
I mean this is he's like we're going to reach the singularity. AGI is coming. And I will say compared to the other people who run major AI labs I trust Demis slightly more. The man won a Nobel Prize and I do think that it's very interesting listening to him I get the impression that this is a guy who is like all right I'll I'll make Gmail talk to you but you got to give me some money so I can make some science happen. Um And the fact that Musk and Altman both were really really fearful of him isn't a bad sign. Yeah I but I am curious like you know you are talking to all of the people in the AI world I think Demis' predictions are quite bold. I'm curious how many of them are thinking about the science
health medicine stuff right now because it's funny we've just everyone keeps talking about AGI but they're so single-mindedly focused it feels like on how can we like sell you stuff? Yeah it's because you know to get to there um, have to sell a lot of stuff. So, I mean, it makes sense, but especially what Google was saying it's like it's CapEx. It's investment in AI has changed from like 31 billion to in 2022 to like 190 billion now. So, they do need money, but yeah, I've I've been it's been interesting thinking about I don't know. I think that sometimes it depends on the company and it depends on like the year, but there have been a lot
of times that AI labs kind of lean on health science stuff as kind of like a piece of good PR when they're facing some bad stuff. Like, you know, they're like, "Oh, but we're also working on curing cancer." Um, you know, and the sometimes they are. Uh, we haven't seen a lot of movement there, but I mean, we have seen DeepMind in particular has done a lot more science has had a lot more success in science than any other AI lab I've seen, which is kind of nice to see, but I don't know. The foothills of the singularity is a little much and I will say I don't know. I think I've seen a trend lately with AI labs of like just really harping on the fact like he said improving the lives of everyone
everywhere. And they've all been really harping on the fact that like, "Oh, we're They're almost like going They're just like beating us over the head with like, "It's not going to harm you. It's not going to hurt you. We're It's actually going to make your life better in every single possible way." And I've been seeing, you know, it's just interesting to see like this kind of new marketing blitz of personal superintelligence like AI that you're in control of when in fact like Pew Research studies from last summer say that like adults feel that like I think 60% of adults don't feel in control of how AI is to used in their life at all. I mean, how could they? Right. Like, it unless you are like an open club bro. Like, that
Like, everyone else I mean, actually then you've given up all control, but you're like so on board. Yeah, actually, that's why open claw was so popular. They're like at ClawCon when I went, everyone was like, "Yeah, this it makes us feel like we have more control than giving all our data to the lab." So, it's just interesting. Yeah. yeah, it's on your Mac mini, baby. Um I do think it's so interesting that they chose to end it with Demis. And on this note, um which I think to your point, maybe that is the idea. Maybe they're they're trying to, you know, put some uh friendlier vibes out there. Demis mentioned um shortly before this, they're doing some sort of Gemini for science thing where they'll allow agents to do different, I
don't know, research tasks. Um I don't know because they gave him 30 seconds to discuss it uh out of this 2-minute keynote. Probably didn't fit into the um like user-friendly language they were going for. I know, and it's like I like genuinely I'm so much more interested in the stuff that DeepMind is doing around, you know, uh allegedly, right? Around uh health and medicine and science. Um It would be great to hear more about that um and not just hear that the singularity is apparently uh coming soon without Don't laugh and lack of details on that. is a conversation with your Gmail account. Congratulations, we've made it.
It's not what it was all cracked up to be. Um okay, Hayden. Uh let's talk about the other big AI story of the week, which is uh a little trial uh that you've been covering for actually 3 weeks. Right. So, yeah, do you want to do you want to talk about what came down this week? Yeah, I mean, it was this week, we just basically got the jury deliberation and verdict like right away. Um but it's been interesting cuz for the past week, it was just non-stop kind of fodder for everyone getting more evidence for the fact that like a of the people in charge of AI just aren't trustworthy and don't love to see that, you know? I mean, it's like piece of evidence after
piece of evidence just showing that they are like temperamentally incapable of being honest with each other. And maybe that's changed in recent years, but you know, it's happened for years and that's what we saw through all these texts. Like, and the other thing I saw that was a little bit disconcerting is just the vying for control, constant vying for control despite the language that they were all parroting, which is we don't want anyone to be in control. We don't want an AGI dictatorship. We don't want any one person to be making all the decisions. Yet, a lot of times in the background they were all vying for control. And sometimes that was, "Oh, well, it's better that I be in
control than someone else." But as we all know from like every movie, that's not really the best approach either. So, yeah, I don't know. Even Satya Nadella was like um talking to some of his colleagues saying, "Well, if we're putting this much money in, we need to have control of destiny." And so, you know, I mean, it's just Those were the two big takeaways I saw. It was like the constant untrustworthiness for years and kind of like playing both sides and, you know, telling people what they want to hear and then doing something different in the background.
Not just Altman, but like a lot of executives at both at all a lot of companies. Yeah, I mean, we saw what Mira Murati was playing both sides as Altman was ousted. Yeah, and then, um you know, Brockman like with Musk, like there was a lot going on there. And then, yeah, just the vying for control of literally everyone involved. It was just really interesting. Even um Brockman and Sutskever at one point told Altman, "Oh, like why do you care about being CEO so much? Does it have something to do with your political goals?" Because he wanted to run for governor. So, yeah, there's just a lot of power like as the reason I'm an AI reporter is honestly to cover the power dynamics in this space because they're so crazy. And this trial really just
like highlighted the weird power dynamics that have always been at play, but we've never seen them so clearly. It is It's entirely unclear to me if Elon thought he was going to win this trial. It does feel likely to me that he wanted all of this nonsense to come out, that he wanted people to see just how much of a train wreck OpenAI's leadership is. One of the things that he did say was his like, you know, what he was hoping to get from the suit was for Altman and or Brockman to either or both step down. So obviously, you know, it doesn't look like that's going to happen, but he did really want to um you know, this is a petty thing for him and he wants to you know, like he it's both petty and not. Like he
you know, really cares about this, he says, but also he really wants to shine a light on some of the shady stuff that's been going on. So you know, everyone involved in this whole situation was shady and that's what's interesting. It's like Musk trying to do this to them has also done it to himself. It's just there's mudslinging everywhere, basically. So you were tuning for all this. Why do you think it was so easy for the jury to the jury deliberated for 2 hours, right? Yeah, I mean it was just too long. Like that he had waited too long to bring the suit. That's what's sad about this. It's like if someone else had brought the
suit or if it had happened sooner, maybe we would have seen a different outcome, but it's just it was just sad to make everyone you know, sit through this for 3 weeks only to discover you know, there's no real decision here, but you know, Musk said he's going to appeal, we'll see. To be honest, there was I don't think that he had a big chance of actually winning because there was never like he donated this money through donor advised funds. So there was a middleman there. He never had a signed agreement saying, oh, this is what the money's going to go to. You know, I don't think it really held up in court at all. I think this is more of a way to kind of yeah, mudsling and just expose things about a company that he
you know, wants to uh control again. If you're interested in hearing more, I can't recommend enough checking out Hayden's coverage and Liz Lopatto's coverage on the site. They've been covering this trial through and through for the past 3 weeks and you can kind of just go through and read the dirt that came out from each executive's testimony and it has been I don't know but a delight is one way to phrase it to read through this stuff. All right, well thank you so much for tuning in live with us. This was fun one. That's it for the Vergecast. Remember to subscribe to the Verge for ad-free episodes of our podcasts, exclusive newsletters, and so
much more. We'd love to hear from you all. Email us ver***@t******e.com. Maybe mention the thunder around. I think it's it's due for a comeback. Or you can call the hotline 866-VERGE11. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Today's show is produced by Eric Gomez and Travis Larchuk. We'll see you next time.
