Google used its annual developer conference on Tuesday to outline an aggressive new vision for artificial intelligence, unveiling a wave of products and upgrades designed to make Gemini the centre of its ecosystem.
At the company's I/O 2026 event in California, CEO Sundar Pichai described the company's next era as 'agentic,' as the company shifts towards an AI system capable of completing autonomous tasks.
'Ten years since we pivoted the company to be AI-first, we still see AI as the most profound way to advance our mission and improve people's lives at scale,' Pichai said.
One of the largest changes is a major redesign of Google Search, used by over 3 billion people. The new Intelligent Search Box, powered by AI, lets users explain what they need without keywords, in what the company calls 'the biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years.' Google is also introducing coding agents into search to help users create custom dashboards, and information agents that work in the background to keep users updated on specific topics.
Google also unveiled two new Gemini models: Gemini Omni, which can combine video, images, audio and text to create high-quality content, and Gemini 3.5 Flash, a lightweight, cost-effective version optimized for developers and auditing tasks. A more advanced Gemini 3.5 Pro model is expected later this year.
AI integrations are expanding across consumer apps, including voice-powered Gmail search, Docs Live for creating documents from verbal notes, and 'Ask' YouTube for direct video queries. The company also introduced new AI Studio tools for generating Android applications from natural language prompts.
Finally, Google renewed its push into extended reality with updated Android XR smart glasses, including audio glasses with live assistance and display glasses for real-time information. Partnerships with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster were confirmed, with audio glasses launching this fall.