Google I/O 2023: news, rumors, and announcements - The Verge

Updated May 14

By Jacob Kastrenakes, a deputy editor who oversees tech and news coverage. Since joining The Verge in 2012, he's published 5,000+ stories and is the founding editor of the creators desk.

Google had a lot to prove coming into I/O 2023 — and the company showed up with a ton of AI announcements to show it would be a serious player in the field.

There was a new large language model, AI features in Docs and Sheets, and generative features in Android. And Google demoed a major overhaul to Google Search that puts generative results front and center.

The company also announced a wave of new Pixel devices, including the Pixel Fold, Pixel Tablet, and Pixel 7A.

Read on below for all the details.

Highlights

  • PinPINNED

    Google just finished up its I/O keynote, where it announced some pretty major updates to its Pixel lineup and showed off its latest advances in AI. If you didn't get a chance to watch the event live, we've rounded up all of the biggest news that came out of the Google I/O keynote.

    Google's Pixel hardware took center stage during the keynote, as the company launched three new products: the Pixel Fold, the Pixel Tablet, and the budget-friendly Pixel 7A.

    Read Article >
  • Clippy on ruled paper.
    Clippy on ruled paper.
    Microsoft's Clippy sits atop its paper throne.
    Image: Microsoft

    The words "it looks like you're writing a letter, would you like some help with that?" didn't appear at any point during Google's recent demo of its AI office suite tools. But as I watched Aparna Pappu, Google's Workspace leader, outline the feature onstage at I/O, I was reminded of a certain animated paperclip that another tech giant once hoped would help usher in a new era of office work.

    Even Microsoft would acknowledge that Clippy's legacy is not wholly positive, but the virtual assistant is forever associated with a particular period of work — one packed to the brim with laborious emails, clip art, and beige computers with clunking hard drives. Now, work has changed — it's Slack pings, text cursors jostling in a Google Doc, and students who don't know what file systems are — and as generative AI creeps into our professional lives, both Google and Microsoft are recognizing that it's calling for a new era of tools to get things done. 

    Read Article >
  • Google is making big changes to how we use the internet,

    but are those changes going to destroy Google and a lot of others in the process? This week on the Vergecast we talked about that, the shockingly good looking Pixel Fold, and everything else announced at Google I/O.


  • Google's Cathy Edwards onstage at Google I/O 2023.
    Google's Cathy Edwards onstage at Google I/O 2023.

    Of all the emotions I expected out of this week's Google I/O keynote, "dread" was not on my short list. Google has spent a couple of decades creating products that make my life easier. This week, it demonstrated the exact opposite: a way to make communicating with other people worse.

    Google I/O, this year, was focused on artificial intelligence, and one of its centerpieces was prompt-based text generation, particularly in Google's office suite. At several points throughout the keynote, it demoed a system called "Help me write" — which rewrites simple prompts in Gmail and other apps as more polished paragraphs of text. But more polished doesn't automatically mean better.

    Read Article >
  • Crowd and stage at Google I/O keynote 2023 just before the presentation begins.
    Crowd and stage at Google I/O keynote 2023 just before the presentation begins.
    This year's I/O keynote featured a lot of AI and very little about the next version of Google's mobile OS.
    Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

    There was a chilly marine layer hanging in the air above the Shoreline Amphitheater, but the danceable beats thumped on in spite of it. Dan Deacon was playing a set that had something to do with AI, followed by a person in a duck costume dancing on stage. Not the kind of spectacle you're typically expecting before you've even had your second cup of coffee, but that's Google I/O, baby. 

    I/O is, of course, the company's yearly developer conference, and it officially kicked off on Wednesday morning when CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage, headlining a two-hour presentation that was almost entirely centered on AI. We got a preview of what's coming to Google Search, Gmail, and Photos, along with an unappetizing, photo-realistic image of pizza fondue. It was all AI, top to bottom. We were reassured, again and again, that Google is being responsible with its AI implementation and that the company is taking steps to make sure the technology doesn't end life on the planet as we know it.

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  • A partially opened Pixel Fold playing a YouTube video on its top half.
    A partially opened Pixel Fold playing a YouTube video on its top half.
    For US buyers, the Pixel Fold is the first credible alternative to Samsung's Galaxy Fold series.
    Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

    I don't give a damn about the bezels. Just let me get that part of Google's new $1,799 Pixel Fold out of the way. They're fine. And I'm absolutely on board with the squat form factor: having this phone / tablet hybrid feel like a notepad in hand when it's closed seems like a far better solution than Samsung's tall boy.

    The Galaxy Fold 4 is too narrow for us large-handed humans, and when opened up, its square-ish inner display leaves sizable black bars when watching videos. In his Pixel Fold hands-on, my colleague Dan Seifert found Google's wider aspect ratio to feel more natural for multitasking.

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  • A screenshot of a Google search query. The query is
    A screenshot of a Google search query. The query is
    I'm about to crumble into dust just typing this.

    There are some who will tell you that Ask Jeeves was right all along. I'm less sure that's true. In fact, I am starting to think that if you are a technical person who is considering a startup, Google's fascination with adding a slow and unreliable AI chat to its results is an opening for you to put a brick on the gas pedal and absolutely run Google over.

    Ask Jeeves launched in 1997, and the idea was that you'd type a natural-language query into the box, and the valet would come back with an answer. (Jeeves is named for P.G. Wodehouse's famous character, a near-omniscient man with a "feudal spirit." Disclosure: my cat is also named for this character.) It was popular until Google Search entered the scene — an engine with a better ability to crawl the web, among its other strengths.

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  • It wouldn't be Google I/O if the company didn't have a new version of its smartphone and tablet operating system waiting in the wings — and while Android 14 got totally upstaged by AI and the company's first folding phone, we've since learned more from the company's developer sessions.

    Don't get too excited: these changes are subtle! But here are a few ways Google's "Upside Down Cake" might make your life slightly sweeter when it arrives this fall.

    Read Article >
  • Shot of the Pixel Tablet showing Home Panel smart home information.
    Shot of the Pixel Tablet showing Home Panel smart home information.Michael Elkan