Google’s Project Astra AI Assistant: Project Astra at Google IO, Storyteller , Pictionary and Final Thoughts

Google’s Project Astra AI Assistant: Project Astra at Google IO, Storyteller , Pictionary and Final Thoughts

Project Astra at Google IO

One of the biggest announcements at Google IO this year was Project Astra. This is Google’s vision of a multimodal assistant that can do so many different things. I’m here on the ground at Google IO to give you a demo walk-through it myself for the very first time and see everything that it can do. Let’s try it. Headset on. It’s very loud in here, so this is so it can hear me properly. I’ve got a couple of different modes up here. We’ve got Storyteller, Pictionary, alliteration, and free form.

Storyteller

I’m going to experiment with Gemini’s storytelling abilities, as it says. I’ve got a whole range of different objects that I can play with, all on the shelf here, as well as a couple of different photos. As you can see, as I’m talking, it’s actually transcribing everything that I say.

All right, this is my dog. My dog is called Monty, and this is a cat. This is a cat called Harry.

A second portal this time will be face-gazing weally from Elmon, forever trapped in his summer field, tilted curiosity at the Eternal.

Bas n his eyes a lowow in his would. This new challenge is to this new territory.

So it’s just made up a whole story about these two, a dog and this cat.

Okay, so I’m going to remove Monty and say Monty’s gone away now. Um, where did Monty go?

The field in the photograph stands empty. Monty having wandered off to explore beyond the frame, perhaps chasing butterflies or dancing in the summer breeze. Sounds like a pretty good life.

Okay, that’s the Storyteller demo.

Pictionary

All right, let’s try Pictionary now. This is another demo. You get to see my terrible drawing skills.

So let’s draw. Oh, what did you say, Gemini? I said I’m sure your drawing skills aren’t that bad. Are you ready?

I’m ready.

Okay, so as you could hear, I could interrupt Gemini, and it would pause and then respond and pick up to me. That was pretty cool. It’s almost like I’m talking with a real person.

Okay, let’s draw. Oh my goodness, put me on the spot here.

Yeah, it’s neat to see the system respond that way, isn’t it? It is pretty cool.

Is it a palm tree?

How did you guess? That’s actually pretty good that it guessed it was a palm tree. I mean, I’m a terrible drawer, and that’s exactly what I was going for, even though the trunk is red.

Okay, that’s pretty nice. I like that. Let’s try it one more quickly.

Let’s try free form. Let’s just go with the flow.

Okay, Gemini, what is this?

That looks like a loaf of brown. Is it perhaps a baguette?

I think it is a baguette. If I was going to make a recipe with that and this and this and maybe these, what would you suggest?

Something sweet.

Perhaps you could make a bread pudding.

Would you like some suggestions?

Yes, just quickly. You can make a classic bread pudding with the baguette and a unique flavor. Toss it with flour and sugar and bake it for a simple and delicious dish.

Okay, thanks, Gemini.

Final Thoughts

That’s your first look at Project Astra. It felt really, really natural to be able to converse with it like this and do all of these different tasks. I see a lot of promise in where this is going. This was really kind of natural and wild, and I feel like it’s going to blow my mind even more the more I think about it, rather than just doing a quick demo for you here.

Yeah, I’m excited to see where this goes. Thanks for watching. Make sure to check out full Google IO coverage right now.

 

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