“Astra” is one of the most ambitious projects Google is working on. It aims to become the foundation for AI-powered Gemini assistants for mobile devices. The company demonstrated the project’s impressive capabilities back in May. Now, Google has confirmed that it will begin rolling out Project Astra in 2025.
What is Project Astra?
Project Astra is a conversational, multimodal experience built into Gemini. It will basically enable the assistant to identify and interact in real time with items and scenarios through your phone’s camera. Google demonstrated Astra’s ability to identify objects in front of it, adapting its output dynamically as someone added or removed items. It will also take advantage of Gemini Live’s advanced conversational capabilities.
Project Astra is so cool. I really wish Google showed us more of the glasses 👀 #GoogleIO pic.twitter.com/IMRaYXKZ7z
— Android Headlines (@Androidheadline) May 15, 2024
Initially, Project Astra will only be available for conversational experiences on general topics. This implies that it won’t be able to access content from your apps because Gemini’s extensions won’t be supported. However, Astra’s capabilities are already pretty impressive, and once Google refines it, it will likely integrate it. Ultimately, Gemini Live and Project Astra will work together to deliver the ultimate AI assistant experience.
Project Astra will reach Gemini Live in 2025, Google confirms
At Google I/O in May, the company said that Astra will be coming to Gemini Live “later this year.” However, it seems that something has changed, as Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed during Alphabet’s Q3 2024 earnings call that the rollout will begin “as early as 2025.” The executive says that Google is working on AI-powered experiences capable of “seeing and reasoning about the world around you” with Astra.
Pichai did not confirm how the rollout will take place. We still don’t know if the release will be universal or if some users will have early access to it first. The latter case is quite likely, considering Google’s background on releasing new features. Since Gemini Live is available for free, let’s hope that is the case with Astra.
The Google CEO also confirmed that it will continue its heavy bet on AI. He recalled that the company has already integrated Gemini-powered features into the Workspace suite of apps. He also claims that there is an “aggressive roadmap ahead for 2025” for Gemini-based developments.
