Google is Firing on all Cylinders with Revamped Maps, Lens, Photos,and News

While Assistant was the runaway leader of advances at I/O, Google had more than enough left in the tank to change the landscape of future technology. With the focus on digital well-being and artificial intelligence, Google revamped Photos, Maps, Lens, and News flexing its muscles on all fronts of digital life.

Along with the tremendous advances in Assistant, Google introduced some truly incredible other technologies including showcasing the AI advancements to Photos as well as the introduction to the worst-kept secret Google News. Google is updating Photos with stronger AI tools such as recognizing individuals and prompting to share the photos with them. In addition, subjects can be selected to pop out in color against a gray-scale background; also, old photos can have color added via AI recognition. Documents can also be detected via Photos which will then be converted automatically to PDF. As expected, Google also announced Google News which will allow readers to explore news that is relevant and complete including a top 5 stories at the top of the app (in the soon to be everywhere “For You” section). It will use AI learning to understand habits and interests, and it is focused on understanding the full story (anti-fake news).

The next addition to Android, Android P, also made headlines today with an abundance of new Android features such as “Slices” which would allow a small “slice” of the app in the search field to perform actions such as purchasing movie tickets and calling a ride; all of this will be powered by AI prediction. Also, Android P will radically change the interaction with the UI by adopting (iPhone X-like) gestures including a swipe up for multi-task and swipe up further for the App drawer. Additionally, swiping sideways on the pill-style home button will show recent apps; these apps are even able to show live action at a glance without opening the full app.

Lens, the Assistant’s camera-scanning friend, also got some major boosts today including its seeming integration with Maps. Lens will become a street-level navigator on the ground with overlaid directions as well as information about landmarks that are on the screen. In addition, Lens will have the ability to pull words off of text to paste elsewhere, recognize animals and food dishes, and pull up shopping results for items in the camera. The beauty of this level of AI integration: Lens uses the camera as a viewfinder so no pictures even need to be taken.

The I/O Keynote was a tremendous success, and an example of how tech companies need to structure keynote addresses. In addition, the amount of effort Google is putting in to artificial Intelligence dominance is admirable. Only time will tell what Apple’s answer to Google’s artificial intelligence, but hey, at least we won’t have to wait too long; WWDC is not that far away.