Google adds new AI features to Pixel phones, including message summaries

By Samantha Kelly

  Alphabet Inc’s Google is adding new artificial intelligence features to its Pixel devices, including iPhone-like message summaries and notification prioritisation. 

The new features, rolling out Tuesday, are powered by on-device AI. Texts across chat apps can be recapped in the notification shade, allowing users to quickly catch up on group chats and other lengthy threads. Last year, Apple Inc. introduced a similar tool as part of Apple Intelligence.

 

The move comes as major tech companies, including Alphabet, Apple, Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc., are racing to make their AI offerings more advanced and more useful to consumers. But unlike Apple, which releases major new features each September and a smaller set of enhancements in the spring, Google is known to push software upgrades — what it calls Pixel Drops — more regularly.

 

Google is also rolling out a feature that prioritises preferred contacts from Google Messages and WhatsApp, which the company calls VIPs. This elevates alerts to the phone’s status bar that runs across the top of the interface. Google will also add a “crisis badge” in its Contacts widget to help users keep tabs on their priority contacts during a critical situation.

 

Other Pixel updates include an upgrade to Google’s AI-powered Remix feature, which turns still images into sketches, 3D animations and videos, allowing Google Messages users to now edit images directly within a chat. The company also introduced a new alert system that notifies users of suspicious messages.

 

Lastly, it’s offering Pixel theme packs with wallpapers, icons, GIFs and sounds, which can be added across the device in one tap. The first is tied to the upcoming film Wicked: For Good.