Latest news with #mixedreality
The Verge
4 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
Android XR hands-on: Google's take on Meta Ray-Ban?
We just got a hands-on with Samsung's Project Moohan and Android XR prototype smart glasses at Google I/O. Android XR is a mixed reality OS designed for headsets and smart glasses, and it seems like Google is directly taking a page out of Meta's smart glasses playbook. Here's our hands-on with The Verge's Victoria Song.
WIRED
20-05-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Everything Google Announced at I/O 2025
Artificial intelligence is now in everything Google touches, including its Android XR mixed-reality glasses, a revamped search experience, and Gemini's new agentic capabilities. Photograph: Jeff Chiu/AP Newsroom Google just held its big I/O developer shindig and product announcement event today in California. As it has for the past couple years, Google continued to go all in on AI. In an I/O keynote address, Google executives announced new AI features coming to absolutely everything. It's in Android, Search, Gemini, and—sooner or later—a pair of Google's smart glasses. We've already blogged all about the event as it happened live. Here's everything Google announced at I/O. Gemini Juices Up Google Assistant, the occasionally useful digital servant at the bottom of your phone, is being replaced, more or less everywhere, by Google's AI usurper, Gemini. Google announced a slew of updates to Gemini, the most impressive of which is Gemini Live. This new feature combines input from your phone's camera, voice commands, and an agent-like ability to search the web, make phone calls, and collate information for you. It's an extension of the experiments we saw last year that were codenamed Project Astra, where Google's machine intelligence engine can describe what it sees through a connected camera, remember key facts about your environment, and do hands-free tasks that you ask it to do by chatting with it in a natural way. Gemini is making its way into Google's suite of productivity apps too, the most illustrative of which is a new feature in Gmail called Personalized Smart Replies. It uses AI to absorb your personal writing style and preferred syntax—culled from all of your notes, emails, docs, and spreadsheets—and use it to generate long replies to emails that match your personal voice. 'With personal smart replies, I can be a better friend,' Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said onstage during his keynote, as he explained how he uses the feature to draft emails to questions from friends that he'd otherwise skip because he's too busy being a CEO. For even more about Google's new Gemini features, read Will Knight 's WIRED interview with Google's DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. There's a new subscription tier for Gemini power users. Courtesy of Google Some of these Gemini features will be coming to users of Android and Google's web apps for free, but others (and the more powerful feature sets) will be available via paid subscription. Google's $20 a month AI Premium service has been renamed to Google AI Pro, and the cost stays the same, though it now comes with more limited features. Google AI Ultra, the company's full suite of AI services, has increased to $250 per month. That's $50 per month more expensive that OpenAI's similar full-suite plan, ChatGPT Pro Gemini Is an Artist, Actually Creative professionals and programmers take note: Google's enhancements to its creative tools will either make your job easier and more productive, or it will render you obsolete. Jules is an 'asynchronous coding agent' that aims to let you take a rough design scribbled on a napkin and turn it into a full-fledged code or graphic design, while showing you the work it did along the way. There's also a new version of Google's AI image generator called Imagen 4 that Google claims can generate much more detail in images, like textures in AI generated paintings or custom text in music posters. Google also has some new generative AI video tools, like Flow, a tool made specifically for AI movie creation. It lets you upload photos or illustrations of characters, props, or scenery, then animate it all into a short movie using text prompts. If you don't have photos, you can just type a generative prompt to make the visuals right inside Flow. Then you build a narrative video scene by scene by describing the action in a text box. The company illustrated Flow by showing a generated video of an old man using a giant chicken in the backseat to make his car fly. The video didn't look that great, and weirdly plastic, but it got the point across. Also included in the update is an enhanced video generator called Veo 3 that Google says has a better understanding of material physics for smoother and more lifelike animations. Search Goes Full AI Mode Last year at I/O, Google unleashed its AI Overviews enhancement to search results, a feature that summarizes results from across the web at the top of the screen for some queries. The results were famously varied, from being just plain busted to having hilarious hallucinations to showing actual plagiarism. Nevertheless, Google is now giving its search experience an even shinier AI sheen. To that end, Google is making search much more chatbot-oriented with its new AI Mode. This search feature was first announced in March 2025 as an experiment, and now it's available within the default Google search experience for everyone in the US. AI Mode appears in a tab within your search results, so you can switch over to it with a click if it's available. Google says AI Mode is designed to answer more complicated search queries that can factor in a variety of questions. It won't give better results for everything, but trickier queries should get more satisfying results. The new AI Mode will also serve as a shopping assistant, where the search tool can help you shop for clothes and then, after you upload a photo of yourself, show you what it would look like if you wore it in a 'virtual try-on' image. This experience is rolling out as a Labs feature, so it's still an experiment, but Google says it will continue to develop the tech. It works for more than clothes, too. If you're shopping for a rug, for example, you can ask for one that's good for kids or pets, and use augmented reality to see how it might look in your room. Read more about all the new stuff coming to AI Mode in Reece Rogers' WIRED story. Android XR Looks Ahead Like nearly every tech company out there these days, Google is investing heavily in its glasses game. Under the purview of its Android XR efforts, Google is simultaneously working on full size mixed reality headsets and slimmer eyewear that look just like regular glasses. The company held a live demo showing off the capabilities of its Android XR glasses. While onstage, a pair of Googlers wore prototypes of the glasses around the event, streaming an augmented reality display that showed texts, maps, and pictures, all of which appeared smack dab in the center of the wearers' vision. Aside from some hiccups in the streaming and an awkwardly stilted demo of the platform's live language translation abilities, the rest of the features seemed to work fairly well. It's not yet clear how bulky the glasses will be, but the prototypes were largely indistinguishable from regular glasses, if a little chunky. The live Android XR prototype demo in action. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu As it makes the move to (hopefully) more ergonomically pleasing glasses, Google announced partnerships with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to help design its upcoming spectacles. The company also says that it now has hundreds of software developers building for the Android XR platform. Google also says that its partner Samsung's Project Moohan mixed reality headset, which was announced last year, will be available later this year. There's no word yet on pricing or availability. Disaster Averted At the very end of the presentation, Google's CEO announced a couple different efforts to battle climate fueled disasters. (Maybe it's a way to not-quite atone for all the energy its AI efforts gobble up.) Fire Sat is a proposed satellite constellation that Google plans to launch over the next several years that aims to use AI to spot wildfires in the earliest stages. Google says the system can detect fires as small as 270 feet, though for now it only has one satellite in orbit. Pichai also touted Wing, a drone delivery service that was used to deliver medicine and supplies during Hurricane Helen. Pichai said he hopes to scale these efforts up in the future.
TechCrunch
20-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Google shows off Android XR-based glasses, announces Warby Parker team-up
Google is taking on Meta's Ray-Ban Meta glasses by announcing new partnerships at Google I/O 2025 with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to create smart glasses based on Android XR. Google launched the Android XR platform with Qualcomm and Samsung last year. While it didn't talk about specific devices then, the latest announcement indicates the company wants to build multiple iterations of glasses and headsets with different partners. On Tuesday, the company also said it would expand its partnership with Samsung to XR glasses. It added that both companies are developing a software and a hardware reference platform for developers to build solutions on. Samsung, Qualcomm, and Google announced a mixed reality project in 2023. Samsung subsequently unveiled a headset, Project Moohan, in late 2024. It's set to debut later this year, Google says. At I/O, Google also showed off concept glasses based on the Android XR platform augmented by its Gemini AI. The glasses have a camera, a microphone, and speakers, just like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. But they also have an optional display to view notifications, affixed to the lens of the glasses. Google demoed several different use cases, such as messaging, turn-by-turn navigation, scheduling appointments, live language translations, and taking photos. The search giant said it is seeding units to select testers to gather feedback.
Entrepreneur
14-05-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
AI Infra Startup Flam Raises USD 14 Mn Series A from RTP Global
The fresh funds will be used to expand globally, strengthen its Asian presence, scale infrastructure, develop new products, and launch a GenAI-powered enterprise suite for mixed reality (MR) tools. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. AI infrastructure startup Flam has raised USD 14 million in a Series A funding round led by RTP Global, with participation from Dovetail and other strategic investors. This brings the San Francisco- and Bengaluru-based startup's total funding to USD 22 million since its founding in 2021. The fresh capital will be deployed to expand operations across North America, Europe, and the Middle East, while strengthening Flam's presence in Asia. The funds will also support infrastructure scaling, new product development, and the launch of a full-stack enterprise suite focused on GenAI-powered mixed reality (MR) tools. Founded by BITS Pilani alumni Shourya Agarwal, Malhar Patil, and Amit Gaiki, Flam is building foundational infrastructure that allows real-time 3D and MR experiences to be delivered directly to users without app downloads or redirects, with latency under 300 milliseconds. "Series A capital brings in laser focus to ship the GenAI tool-chain that brands and enterprises have been begging for—an enterprise suite across channels to make experiences engaging, measurable, and interactive," said Shourya Agarwal, Co-founder and CEO of Flam. Flam's upcoming offerings include automated 3D asset generation, a self-serve publishing platform for MR content, an integrated advertising suite, and analytics dashboards. These tools are tailored for use across retail, sports, broadcast, and live events. The company's platform is already used by over 100 major brands, including Google, Samsung, Emirates, Dabur, AJIO, Flipkart, and Tanishq, and has even been deployed in high-stakes political campaigns like the US Presidential Elections. Flam's technology enables brands to transform static touchpoints—like packaging, digital ads, and TV broadcasts—into interactive MR experiences. Nishit Garg, Partner at RTP Global, said, "What excites us is not just the technology, but the clarity of vision and speed of execution. Shourya, Malhar, and team are building a category-defining company—and we're excited to be part of their journey in this next phase of growth." Flam is also expanding its partner ecosystem by empowering creative studios and platforms to build and launch MR content with speed and scale—marking its bold step toward reshaping how brands interact with consumers in the GenAI era.
South China Morning Post
09-05-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Mixed reality, 3D printing: cutting-edge tech transforms surgery at Hong Kong hospital
A Hong Kong hospital is now using advanced mixed reality and 3D printing technology to improve the precision of orthopaedic surgery and provide patients with better treatment. Advertisement Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin officially implemented the mixed-reality visualisation last year, applying head-mounted displays that allow virtual objects to be overlaid onto the real world. The tool helping surgeons plan and prepare complex operations has been used in 50 cases of bone and soft tissue tumours at the hospital so far since its trial in 2023. The institution said it expected to apply it to 140 cases per year involving treatment of bone tumours and scoliosis – a type of spinal deformity, complex fractures and bone deformities. 'We take the patient's images and create a digital 3D model, which is integrated with the patient's body … It's like you can actually see through the patient's skin and see what tissues are underneath,' said Dr Wong Kwok-chuen, consultant at the hospital's department of orthopaedics and traumatology. Advertisement 'It is a tool to help doctors understand how to perform surgery as quickly as possible, and perform the surgery well and accurately, so that the patient can have the best results.'
