Google announces AI-powered advances at I/O 2026

Google announced a range of updates at its 2026 I/O event, with artificial intelligence tools once again taking the spotlight, as the search giant looks to solidify its position as one of the top AI developers.

And with usage of Google’s Gemini AI bot on the rise, it’s clearly building momentum in AI development.

Usage of the Gemini app has surpassed 900 million actives, which makes it one of the most popular conversational AI tools on the market.

Building on this, Google announced Gemini Omni, a new generative AI model that can create images and video from various prompts and inputs.

As per Google: “Gemini Omni combines intuitive understanding of physics with Gemini’s real-world knowledge and reasoning. Now, the stories and outputs you create won’t just look photorealistic, they’ll behave like the real world.”

Gemini Omni will be able to combine images, audio, video and text to generate high-quality outputs, providing a range of usage options to build AI assets.

It could be a handy tool for marketers, enabling advanced AI creation from multiple inputs.

Google is also bringing conversational AI to more of its products, including Google Docs Live, which will enable users to create and edit documents via conversational prompts.

A new image generation tool called Google Pics will be able to create all kinds of visuals, from party flyers to infographics, from conversational prompts. 

Additionally, advanced AI search tools are coming to YouTube, with the new Ask YouTube process enabling users to get video and text results to expand on YouTube search queries. That will provide more context to accompany YouTube queries, which could make it easier to learn more about a focus subject in-stream.

Google is also rolling out advanced UI design tools, a daily news summary tool, Antigravity for more advanced coding and Gemini 3.0 Flash for technical users.

A new shopping experience was announced that will enable users to add things to their shopping cart across all Google apps, which they can then return to at any time.

Universal Cart will work across merchants and services, streamlining the shopping process within Google’s various discovery surfaces including Search, YouTube and Gmail.

In other I/O 2026 news, Google said it is launching its own AI-powered smart glasses in partnership with Samsung, Warby Parker and Gentle Monster.

Like Meta’s AI glasses, Google’s smart glasses will enable full Gemini functionality from the device, giving wearers an always-on digital assistant.

Partnering with glasses makers, like Meta has done with EssilorLuxottica, will help ensure that Google’s smart glasses are fashionable and more aligned with everyday use. As opposed to Google Glass, its previous smart glasses project, which lost its cool factor very quickly, and never caught on as a consumer device.  

These are just some of the announcements from I/O 2026, with various other technical advances and options, focused on AI, announced at the event.