The Pixel 9 might come with exclusive “Pixie” AI assistant

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Move over Google Assistant, Google is apparently working on a new AI. The Information reports that Google is working on a new “Pixie” AI assistant that will be exclusive to Pixel devices. Pixie will reportedly be powered by Google’s new “Gemini” AI model. The report says Pixie would launch first on the Pixel 9: “Eventually, Google wants to bring the features to its lower-end phones and devices like its watch.”

So far, Google and Amazon reportedly have plans to reboot their voice assistants with the new wave of large language models. Both are only at the rumor stage, so neither company has promoted how a large language model will help a voice assistant. Today, the typical complaints are usually around voice recognition accuracy and response time, which a language model doesn’t seem like it would help with. Presumably, large language models would help allow longer-form, more in-depth responses to questions, but whether consumers want to hear a synthetic robot voice read out a paragraph-long response is something the market will figure out.

Another feature listed in the report is that Google might build “glasses that could make use of the AI’s ability to recognize the objects a wearer is seeing.” Between Google Glass and Project Iris, Google has started and stopped a lot of eyewear projects.