Before I first tried Google's Project Astra – three times at Google I/O 2024 – a Google rep asked me not to be adversarial. I’d been asking questions about Astra’s last training date and how Google might react to a search warrant for Astra’s location data (more later, promise). But you can’t tell me, “don’t be adversarial” with an AI. As a writer and editor — a creator — AI IS the adversary … maybe. We don’t know yet, because this is all so very new. In the end, Project Astra wasn’t scary; it isn’t hitting the market any time soon, and I just wanted to play with it and have more fun.
Project Astra is a multimodal AI project from Google. That means it connects different types of input to create a response that seems more contextual than an AI that uses just one input method at a time. It uses a camera for vision and listens to your voice. You can draw a picture, and it will try to interpret what you draw. What it gives you in return is speech. Simply show and tell Project Astra whatever you like, and it talks back to you.
