Although the protagonists of the August Made by Google event will be the new Pixel 9, everything indicated that the search engine also prepared some surprises for us regarding the software, orImplementation of new functions based on artificial intelligencein response to the debut of Apple Intelligence next September, with which those from Cupertino intend to catch up in the field of artificial intelligence after falling far behind last year.

And why did I say we thought in the past tense? Because Google cannot escape information leaks and in this case we will find very interesting information regarding the new AI-based features that they will introduce next month. And while there aren’t many, from what Android Authority tells us, they promise to be quite interesting. And one of them, Screenshots, is sure to stir many consciences in Redmond, as you will see below.

No need to go in depth again. controversy that has surrounded the Recall feature since it was announced by Microsoft at the Copilot+ PC specification presentation event. As you may remember, this feature automatically captures what’s happening on the PC, analyzes it with AI, indexes it, and then makes it searchable. Fortunately, privacy and security issues, investigations, and a tsunami of criticism eventually forced the company to back down on several occasions.

It seems that Google is preparing for the Pixel 9 and possibly the previous generations, a feature called Screenshots and aims to offer something similar. But with a difference that changes everything, and that’s it It will be the user who tells the device when to take a picture. In this way, Screenshot will analyze and index exactly what the user wants to have available later in the search.

Obviously, we’ll need to know more about how it works to fully assess its safety, but giving the user full control over what can be capturedand that nothing is captured by default, it is already quite clear to us that Google was able to understand very well one of the main problems of the Recall function and therefore extracted the most positive part of the said function, but the said user always has control over the catches.

In addition to Screenshot, there are two other AI-based features that will also see the light of day in the Pixel 9 announcement:

• add me: With the Pixel 8 and Android 14, Google introduced the “Best take” feature, which is very useful for group photos, as it allows you to take several group photos and then individually select the best shot of each person’s face in the picture. Add Me aims to make progress in this regard, as its description seems to suggest that it will allow footage of different people to be merged to create an image in which all those people are present.
• Studio: “You imagine it, Pixel creates it,” goes the description of this new feature. So it sounds very clear as a generative solution for AI model-based creation. We are most likely talking about creating images, but we should not rule out that you can also create other types of audiovisuals, such as animations and short clips.

Plus Google also refers to Geminiin this case in the role of Android digital assistant, already Circle to Search, a feature we’ve talked about on multiple occasions and which Google seems to be taking special care of. In this sense, the big question is whether we will only see a reminder of them, or whether, along with the debut of the Pixel 9, Google reserves some surprises with regard to both.