Google I/O 2026: All the news and announcements

Last year I deepfaked my kid’s stuffed animal to make it look like his plush deer was on vacation.

It was an experiment to see if I could re-create the events depicted in a Gemini ad Google was running, and I never showed the videos of Buddy the deer on his adventures to my four-year-old. But it was a revealing exercise that made me think a lot about the difference between some harmless fun with generative AI and full-on slop. Maybe that Venn diagram is a perfect circle! Maybe not. But what I know for sure is that the tools to make realistic videos are surprisingly good, requiring surprisingly little effort and know-how. And that trend is continuing hot into Gemini’s Omni era.

Selling the smart home has been hard. Even Amazon has lost money in the space, despite putting hundreds of millions of Echo devices in people’s homes. Google has also reportedly struggled to turn a profit from its substantial investment in Nest. But now Google is seeing dollar signs in the prospect of selling AI-driven subscriptions in the smart home. And it’s not alone.

At Google I/O this week, Google announced it’s expanding its Gemini for Home APIs to allow companies to integrate more of its Gemini-powered smart home features into their own apps. In a blog post, Google’s Ravi Akella, director of product management for the Home Platform, said this will enable “service providers and hardware manufacturers to build monetizable, proactive services that care for users and their homes.”

Yesterday, I built my first Android app. Then, I made two more — three in one afternoon.

For one, I literally typed 148 words into my web browser and walked away. Ten minutes later, I had an entire new app on my actual Android phone. I did have to prep that phone by enabling a USB debugging mode and plugging it into my PC, but as advertised, Google’s AI Studio did literally everything else for me.

This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they’re going to change your life. This week’s issue is a special early edition tied to The Verge’s Google I/O coverage. You can expect our next issue at its usual time next Friday. Opt in for Optimizer here.

Toward the end of this year’s Google I/O keynote, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis declared, with a completely deadpan face, that the company hopes to “reimagine the drug discovery process with the goal of one day solving all disease.”

“There’s an app for that” was the promise of the App Store from the very beginning. The app that will get your phone to do the thing you want it to? It’s just a few taps away. The tagline wasn’t strictly true — I’m still waiting for that one perfect grocery list app. Still, apps shaped the modern smartphone into what it is today. We spend all day, every day inside of apps — scrolling, listening, and tapping until we find what we want. But your next favorite app might just be one that you made yourself.

If you weren’t familiar with the concept of “vibe coding” at the beginning of 2026, you probably are now. As AI coding tools have become better and more accessible, more and more non-developers are finding success creating apps that fulfill a niche need. Vibe coders are mostly working with desktop software, but signals from this Google I/O and beyond indicate that mobile will be the next frontier.

Google announced a new YouTube Shorts Remix feature that lets users restyle clips or even insert themselves into other people’s videos using Gemini Omni. Now, at the bottom of a YouTube Short, when you click the remix icon, you’ll see an option to “reimagine” it. Here, you can prompt Gemini to turn a video into pixel art, an anime, or a found-footage horror film. But, beyond that, you can also alter the contents by, say, inflating heads, inserting background actors, dressing people in pirate costumes, or even putting yourself in the clip.

Creators can enable or disable the ability to reimagine videos. So, if you upload a short of your kids and would prefer (for obvious and understandable reasons) that people not be able to manipulate it, you can turn off remixing. Google also says that shorts remixed through Omni will have a digital watermark and link back to the original video.

We’re about to find out if the systems designed to make deepfakes and AI-generated content easy to spot are actually up to snuff. SynthID and C2PA Content Credentials, two distinct technologies for invisibly tagging image, video, and audio files with information about their origins, are getting their biggest expansion to date, and with it, the opportunity to turn the tide against unlabeled AI fakery that’s deceiving people online.

Yesterday during its I/O conference, Google announced that the ability to verify whether images carry SynthID markers — the invisible watermarking system that’s applied to content generated by Google AI models — is coming to Chrome and Search. That’s significant because Chrome absolutely dominates the global market share for web browsers and search engines, so AI verification tools are being shoved in front of more eyeballs. It also streamlines the checking process; if you currently want to check an image for SynthID markers, you’re expected to upload it to the Gemini app.

For years, tech companies have promised AI will give everyone a capable personal assistant but delivered something more like a clueless intern. Over the past six months, that has started to change, thanks largely to the viral open-source AI agent platform OpenClaw. And among the top AI labs now chasing similar success, one seems particularly well-poised to make agents succeed at a large scale: Google.

At I/O 2026, Google announced new AI agents for gathering information, planning events, summarizing your inbox and calendar, and more. The agents can run continuously in the background, and the company claims they’ll seamlessly integrate into Google’s own tools and external ones. It’s also expanding its developer tools and revamping Search with additional generative AI capabilities. Some are rolling out this week, and some will be available in the coming months, but the company’s strategy seems clear: adopt some of the features that have helped fuel OpenClaw’s success and amplify them with Google’s deep knowledge of our digital presence.

Google is adding a new Android feature that resembles Apple’s Handoff, allowing you to start a task on your Android phone and continue it right where you left off from a compatible tablet.

“Continue On” is designed to eventually be bidirectional, but Google says that at launch it will only support tasks moving from a smartphone to a tablet. Android tablet users will see the Continue On icon in the dock suggesting the most recently used app from their phone, assuming it’s also installed on the tablet.

Amid the flurry of today’s Google I/O announcements, Google shared details about Wear OS 7, the next major update to its smartwatch platform. To help you keep track of things like deliveries and sports scores, Wear OS 7 will get the iPhone-style Live Updates that were introduced on Android last year — which can appear on your watch or your smartphone — and you’ll also be able to track automated tasks that an AI is working on right from your watch.

Wear OS is also getting an upgrade from its widget-like Tiles for glanceable information. With the new update, Google is adding “Wear Widgets” to the platform, which look more like Android widgets and can appear in small or large layouts that “align perfectly” with Android’s 2x1 and 2x2 widget formats. There are some AI-powered features coming to Wear OS 7 as well, including the introduction of Gemini Intelligence, Google’s catch-all branding for personalized and proactive Gemini features, on “select watches” launching “later this year.”

Welcome to a “profound moment for humanity,” according to Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, who closed out Google I/O’s keynote presentation on Tuesday, saying:

Just before announcing we’ve possibly arrived at “the foothills of the singularity,” Hassabis introduced Gemini for Science, a set of tools and experiments in Google Labs and Google Antigravity intended for helping with scientific research. According to Hassabis, with tools like these, Google hopes to “reimagine drug discovery with the goal of one day solving all disease.” Tech executives often discuss AI this way, like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella referring to AI as “cognitive amplifier tools” and Luma AI CEO Amit Jain’s claim last year that AI is the key to saving Hollywood.

Last year, after watching Google’s I/O keynote, I wrote that it felt like Google’s future was Google googling. After watching this year’s I/O keynote on Tuesday, I don’t think Google just wants to google for you — I think it wants to do everything for you, all from a search box.

Take the trusty Google search bar itself, something Google is generally hesitant to update, which is getting some updates. It will “dynamically” expand as you type longer queries. It will offer “AI-powered suggestions” that Google claims will “go beyond autocomplete,” which could cause you to fill in the blanks of a search in a way you didn’t intend and that may or may not be helpful.

Google has big promises for its AI-powered future — and a lot of it depends on your trust. At I/O 2026, Google described a bunch of new tools that it claims will make your life easier. Gemini Spark, Google’s always-on AI agent, can help organize an upcoming event, while Daily Brief can offer a rundown of what to expect during your day. Google is even expanding access to Gmail’s AI inbox, which can generate custom to-do lists and draft personalized replies based on your emails.

Many of these features seem genuinely useful, but at the heart of each of them is an AI engine that runs on a trove of personal information. While other AI companies, like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic, let you connect other apps and data that you use, Gemini’s access to the personal data already stored across Google’s services lies behind a simple opt-in menu — one of its key advantages in the AI race.

Gemini is gaining the power of sight and mobility. Today at the I/O conference, Google and Volvo announced that the AI-powered assistant will be able to access external cameras in the upcoming EX60 SUV to help explain and interpret its surroundings to vehicle owners. The upgrade is possible thanks to Volvo’s use of Google’s embedded Android Automotive as its vehicle operating system.

Google posits that the first use case will be to ask Gemini to translate difficult-to-understand parking signs, though the company obviously sees other future applications as possible as well. Google envisions a camera-enabled Gemini recalling a road sign, interpreting lane markings, or even answering questions about a nearby landmark or restaurant. The company says Gemini will be able to tell car owners how long they can park in a certain location, whether they need certain permits, and other restrictions.

Google’s I/O 2026 keynote today was once again full of AI-related announcements including a new family of Gemini 3.5 AI models, new features for Search and Gmail, and updates about its Project Aura smart glasses.

If you weren’t able to tune into the event’s livestream today or follow along with our live blog, you can catch up on everything you missed in our roundup below.

Google is making a big push into cybersecurity. At I/O, the company announced that it was inviting select groups of experts to test the API for CodeMender, an “AI agent for code security” it debuted last October. The difference is that Google is now making the tool more widely available externally — and marketing it as a way to, as Google DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu put it, “help secure the world’s code bases” by both flagging and fixing vulnerabilities.

Anthropic’s surprise Claude Mythos Preview announcement seemed to shock the AI world — and a ton of others, like top banks and the Federal Reserve chair. So, led by Anthropic’s news, a lot of companies have been following suit by offering their own versions of a powerful AI model designed to point out unknown security gaps in high-stakes systems. Anthropic made headlines for Mythos Preview being supposedly too powerful to release publicly, and it helped the company get back in the US government’s good graces after its supply chain risk designation and ensuing lawsuit. It also stands to make the company a lot of money if things go well with its early-access enterprise users and government agencies. So as the pressure builds for other companies to turn a profit ahead of potential IPOs, like OpenAI — or to stay in the lead of the ever-intensifying AI race, like Google — AI labs are seeing cybersecurity as a potential key revenue driver.

Google announced some big updates for its Gemini app during its annual I/O event on Tuesday. Though you might notice the redesign first, Google is also bringing two new AI models to Gemini and is testing out an always-on AI model that can complete tasks on your behalf.

Here are all the biggest updates to Gemini announced at I/O.

Google is announcing some big upgrades for Gemini at Google I/O, including a new design language for the app and a more intelligent 3.5 Flash model.

The company calls the new design language for Gemini “Neural Expressive,” which it says features “fluid animations, vibrant colors, new typography and haptic feedback.” It features a big “Ask Gemini” bar that’s easy to tap to start a conversation, and you’ll also see a slight gradient blue from the bottom — gradients, after all, are kind of Google’s thing right now.

Google is announcing a major new family of generative AI models that it calls Gemini Omni. The first Omni Model, Omni Flash, can generate AI videos using an assortment of different inputs: text, photos, videos, and audio. Down the line, though, Google envisions Omni as something that can “create anything from any input,” according to a blog post — hence the Omni name.

The company is positioning Omni Flash as a video version of something like its Nano Banana image generation model, which people have already used to generate more than 50 billion images since its introduction last year. For example, you’ll be able to ask Omni Flash to insert a likeness of you into videos, which doesn’t sound like anything I’d ever want to do. But Nicole Brichtova, who leads the product team that works on Omni, tells The Verge that Google has seen a lot of people insert their likeness into images with Nano Banana.