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Title: My favorite Google AI features from the Pixel 10 launch

Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2025 13:00:23 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/ai/my-favorite-googl...

The Made By Google event was not only a showcase of GoogleΓÇÖs latest Pixel
hardware, but a launchpad for many new AI features. IΓÇÖm typically skeptical
of the current generation of AI, but as I checked out the new software across
various demo sessions, I found myself more and more intrigued. It seems like
Google, along with Apple and Samsung, has been working on making these AI-
powered updates more helpful in a way that might actually make our lives
easier or simply more fun.

There wasnΓÇÖt enough time to write up every single one of them, so IΓÇÖve
put a few of my favorites in this story to give you a better sense of what to
expect when the Pixel 10 series hits retail shelves later this month. Spoiler
alert: Many of these have to do with voice and calls ΓÇö an area Google has
historically excelled at.

The Recorder app can generate backing music

I have long been enamored with GoogleΓÇÖs Recorder app. It started with the
on-device transcription that made getting quotes from my interviews easy and
relatively secure. But when Apple introduced a multi-track recording function
to its Voice Memos app, I quickly jumped ship. While the iOS recorder has
inferior transcription in terms of accuracy and readability, the fact that I
could basically record a duet with myself seriously appealed to the musical
theater geek in me. I played both Elphaba and Glinda, crooning their parts
from ΓÇ£For GoodΓÇ¥ into my iPhone.

But when GoogleΓÇÖs senior director of product management for Pixel software
Shenaz Zack told me the Pixel 10ΓÇÖs recorder app would add AI-generated
music to your singing, I went silent in slight disbelief. I spent much of my
youth ripping karaoke tracks from YouTube videos, looking up ΓÇ£minus oneΓÇ¥
or ΓÇ£backing tracksΓÇ¥ or ΓÇ£instrumentals onlyΓÇ¥ on various download
platforms. My friends and I were aspiring performers, looking to mix our own
covers of popular songs, and a tool that would generate backing music to our
voice tracks would have been a dream come true. Honestly it kind of still is.

Zack walked me through the process twice ΓÇö on my first try I sang a verse
and part of the chorus of ΓÇ£GoldenΓÇ¥ from the Kpop Demon Hunters
soundtrack. I giggled self-consciously at the end, before Zack hit stop. As
it recorded, the app actually showed a tag that indicated it knew I was
singing, and when we selected the recording after, a chip appeared saying
ΓÇ£Create and add music.ΓÇ¥

Tapping that brought up a panel titled ΓÇ£Choose a vibe to create musicΓÇ¥
with two sections: Featured vibes and Your vibes. Under the first one, the
options were ΓÇ£Chill beats,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£Cozy,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£Dance party,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£Rainy day
blues,ΓÇ¥ ΓÇ£RomanticΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£Surprise me.ΓÇ¥ On my second attempt, when I
rushed through a rendition of the all-time banger ΓÇ£Mary Had a Little
Lamb,ΓÇ¥ the app displayed a warning at the bottom that said ΓÇ£The beat
might not match well if the recording is short.ΓÇ¥

I chose Dance Party, hit next, and waited a minute or so while Recorder went
to work. The animation at the top said the system was analyzing the audio,
identifying the rhythm, locking onto the beat and harmonizing the track
before delivering the result.

I donΓÇÖt quite know what I was expecting, but I can say that those who were
at all concerned about digital rights management have nothing to worry about.
The music that Google generated for ΓÇ£GoldenΓÇ¥ sounded nothing like the
original, and while it did make my voice sound less lonely and made for a
more complete track, I felt like I needed a few more adjustments to feel
satisfied with it. As for ΓÇ£Mary Had a Little Lamb,ΓÇ¥ the result was as
generic as expected for an AI-generated soundtrack to a very basic nursery
rhyme.

To GoogleΓÇÖs credit, what came out seemed to be in the right key and rhythm,
and I certainly will need much more time playing around with this to see if
tweaking the settings will help. I also wanted to point out that the
generated music also stopped as my singing stopped, so the giggling I
mentioned earlier was not scored.

Although this feature did not live up to my (admittedly unrealistic) fantasy,
I do think itΓÇÖs a fun use of AI and seems harmless. ItΓÇÖs not going to be
a mainstay of most peopleΓÇÖs daily routines, although Zack did say that a
large percent of people actually used Recorder for singing. This update could
certainly make for a nice little dose of musical creativity.

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Voice Translate made it sound like I was speaking German

I had more concerns around the Voice Translate feature that was supposed to
make you or your caller sound like you were speaking in a different language.
According to Google, the goal is to ΓÇ£break down language barriers during
phone calls.ΓÇ¥ When I asked Zack why the company felt the need to make the
voice resemble the callerΓÇÖs, she said it was about personal connection.

Zack explained that her parents live in India, and though they speak English,
theyΓÇÖre not very fluent. That makes for some difficulty when they call
ZackΓÇÖs kids. Simply adding a robotic voice thatΓÇÖs translating between the
grandparents and the children wouldnΓÇÖt feel right, either. I was initially
skeptical that fully replacing the callerΓÇÖs original voice with a
translated version would help, but after a few demos, I am certainly swayed.

To be clear, the person placing the call has to do so from a Pixel phone for
Voice Translate to work. Once you choose Voice Translate from the Call Assist
submenu, youΓÇÖll have to choose a language. When the call is connected, the
system will say to both parties that the ΓÇ£Call is translated by Google AI
in each speakerΓÇÖs voice. Audio is not saved.ΓÇ¥

I tried this out a few times with a Google representative who spoke German,
whom we will refer to as ΓÇ£Uncle TimΓÇ¥ to make it easier for me to describe
this demo. Each time he spoke, I could hear a couple seconds of his voice in
German, before a chime played and the version in the original language became
softer. What sounded like a dubbed actor playing Uncle Tim came on and
conversed in English, complete with realistic replications of pitch, rhythm
and expression.

I also could hear feedback when I talked on the call, so I heard myself
speaking German on the other end. It was truly strange, because it sort of
did sound like me. One of my closest friends lives in Germany, and has had to
put up with my attempts to learn German for more than 10 years. I immediately
wanted to try Voice Translate on her to see if she would believe I had
suddenly become fluent (but of course, IΓÇÖd have to figure out how to get
her to ignore the warnings that Google AI was at work).

IΓÇÖll be honest, the experience wasnΓÇÖt perfect. Not only were the
translations sometimes off (some of what Uncle Tim said in English didnΓÇÖt
make sense), the generated voices seemed less like a complete replication of
the caller and more like a novice dubbing artist. ThatΓÇÖs not a bad thing,
since I was very concerned about impersonation being a problem.

To that end, Zack said Google was deliberate about the implementation. She
reminded me of the ΓÇ£duckingΓÇ¥ that was in place, which is when the
original speech is still audible in the first few seconds and then softer
throughout. Like the original audio is ducking below the dubbed voice ΓÇö get
it? And I remembered that while the AI voice might sound sort of like me, it
isnΓÇÖt designed to simply make up things IΓÇÖm saying ΓÇö itΓÇÖs just
translating the content. IΓÇÖm the one that decides whether to go off and
curse out a relative and have that conveyed in their native tongue, for
example.

Of course, there may still be bugs and quirks to work out. I was amused by
the various accents that came through in the English-speaking version of
Uncle Tim. At first he sounded American, but in subsequent conversations he
took on an Australian accent.

All this is powered by the Pixel 10ΓÇÖs Tensor G5 chip and processed on-
device using ΓÇ£a new codec and semantic understanding,ΓÇ¥ according to Zack,
to understand the speakerΓÇÖs vocal expressions. For now, I see what Google
is going for and cannot wait to call my friend in Frankfurt.

At launch, Voice Translate will support translating to or from English with
Spanish, German, Japanese, French, Hindi, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish,
Russian and Indonesian.

Google/Screenshot by Engadget Magic Cue surfacing your flight info when you
call your airline is helpful

The recorder app, translation and expressive-sounding AI are areas Google has
long proven expertise in. And lest we forget, the company has also been a
pioneer in suggesting actions from your emails and adding events to your
calendar by scanning your inbox. With the Pixel 10ΓÇÖs Magic Cue feature,
Google is basically bringing this functionality to your texts and calls.

While Magic Cue can helpfully show shortcuts within the Messages app to help
you answer questions about reservations or send photos from recent trips,
IΓÇÖm most into one specific aspect. When you call an airline to make changes
to a flight, for instance, the Pixel 10 can pull up your reservation
information and display it within the call, so you wonΓÇÖt have to open your
email, and search for the booking confirmation to have your reference number
ready. Sure, it might only save you seconds, but itΓÇÖs so much easier, and
Google already does a version of this in your inbox.

I would love to see this particular feature expand and cover other types of
appointments so you can quickly get codes or other identifying information
during calls to, say, your plumber, doctor, insurance provider and more.

Camera and photo features continue to improve

Google continues to improve upon areas itΓÇÖs led the way in, and photography
remains a strength of Pixel phones. The company was one of the first major
players to use its algorithmic prowess to dramatically improve the quality of
low light photos and with the Pixel 10 Pro it again uses computational
processing to deliver superior images.

Pro Res Zoom on the new phone did manage to produce some surprisingly clean
pictures of faraway buildings, at least in my demo at GoogleΓÇÖs Manhattan
office. I was impressed by how clear the lines on the underside of a
skyscraper that we zoomed to a 100x level on looked. Google was also careful
to clarify that Pro Res Zoom wonΓÇÖt work on people, and that distant text
may look odd.

"We've tuned Pro Res Zoom to minimize hallucinations, however they may still
occur ΓÇö especially with faraway text. Additionally, when Pro Res Zoom
detects a person in the scene, we use a different enhancement algorithm that
prevents inaccurate representations," according to Google.

in those situations, the algorithm will drop to Super Res Zoom quality.
Depending on which Pixel phone youΓÇÖre using, Super Res Zoom delivers up to
either 20x or 30x zoom.

In the results I saw, people standing on a deck at the top of a tower just
seemed a bit pixelated compared to the buildingΓÇÖs facade, and the effect
wasnΓÇÖt jarring or even really noticeable until I zoomed in. But that might
be because they were a tiny part of the picture ΓÇö I imagine things would
look different if a person was the main subject in a scene.

As someone who enjoys composing pictures, I didnΓÇÖt think the Camera Coach
feature would do anything for me. But I was pleasantly surprised that I
actually liked some of the AIΓÇÖs proposed framing options. I still donΓÇÖt
think IΓÇÖll use this much in the real world, but it might help other people
who want tips on photography.

I was initially nonplussed about the new Photos feature that lets you tell
the AI how to edit your pictures, but after a brief demo I came around.
Simply telling Gemini to ΓÇ£turn that red dress blueΓÇ¥ or ΓÇ£get rid of the
people in the backgroundΓÇ¥ was not only easier, but suprrisingly effective.
I also want to point out that Google also made tweaks to the Guided Frame
feature in its camera app that helps those who are blind or visually impaired
know what is in the scene. It now uses Gemini models, which should help with
object recognition.

Finally, itΓÇÖs worth calling out the support for C2PA content authenticity
initiative. Google is building this into the Photos app, where metadata will
show whether or not AI was used in a picture. The Pixel 10 phones will be the
first to implement the new industry-standard Content Credentials (CR) within
its native camera app, and companies like Adobe, Amazon, Google, Meta,
Microsoft, OpenAI are all part of the initiative.

An assortment of other updates worthy of mention

Those were just a slice of the new AI-related features I was impressed by at
my recent demos ahead of GoogleΓÇÖs event this week. But there are quite a
few more I found promising, like visual overlays in Gemini Live and the new
Pixel Journal app. I didnΓÇÖt spend as much time with either, but they worked
in my brief demos. So did the ΓÇ£take a messageΓÇ¥ feature that will send
transcriptions of voicemails to you, which seems like a much better way to be
alerted to a missed call than a hidden section of the Phone app.

IΓÇÖm not yet sold on the Daily Hub, which is basically an updated version of
the existing pages that sit to the left of the home page showing relevant
actions and articles you might want to explore. IΓÇÖm fairly intentional when
it comes to looking for things to consume, and have specific apps I prefer
for doomscrolling (Reddit over everything), so IΓÇÖm not sure Daily Hub will
suit me.

Still, the fact that I liked the bulk of the new AI features coming to the
Pixel 10 series is pretty significant. Of course, I will still reserve
judgement until I can spend more time with them in the real world, and hope
to write reviews of some of them. But itΓÇÖs clear from my time with demos of
the Pixel 10 that Google has been pretty thoughtful about how it imbues its
hardware with AI, and I hope its competitors take notes.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/ai/my-favorite-googl...
launch-130023979.html?src=rss

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