Back in May, at the Google I/O developer conference, Google announced that it was working on a new AI assistant it dubbed “Project Astra”. Astra is designed to be a universal AI agent for everyday life, with the ability to utilize your phone’s camera and voice recognition software to aid you. All while understanding commands and responding like a real human being.
Google originally promised that Astra would come to Google’s Gemini app sometime “later this year”. That timeline has now been moved to sometime in 2025, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirming the news during the Q3 earnings call for parent company Alphabet.
Pichai didn’t go into any specifics, only saying that Google is “building out experiences where AI can see and reason about the world around you” — adding that Google is aiming to “ship experiences like this as early as 2025”. It’s unclear what experiences will be coming next year, and if anything Google initially announced will be available before the end of the year.
Considering Apple is set to release its own camera-based AI tool, called Visual Intelligence, to iPhone 16 at some point in December, you’d hope that Google would be hustling to avoid lengthy delays.
The use of the word “experiences” also suggests that there may be more to Project Astra than the camera-centric mode. However Pichai could also be referring to the fact Astra will be available on Android phones and smart glasses — which will likely offer very manifestations of what Astra can do.
Google’s AI ambitions don’t start and end with Astra, though. Pichai also says that Google’s teams are “actively working on performance improvements and new capabilities for our range of models.” He also confirmed that a third generation Gemini Model, likely Gemini 2.0, is “progressing well”, but didn’t offer any additional details. Rumor is that Gemini 2.0 could be announced as soon as December, which would mean there’s at least some good AI news coming before the end of the year.
As for the rest of Google’s services, and their eventual integration with AI, Pichai said that there’s an “aggressive roadmap ahead for 2025”. So expect Gemini and other Google AI features to spread rather rapidly over the next 12-14 months.
