AI continues to give me mixed feelings about the future, and that’s the bottom line after another Gemini-heavy Google I/O last week. On the one hand, Google continues to show off some of the most practical and useful ideas for AI, but I struggle to get really excited until I can trust it.
There are a million ideas out there in the AI landscape, but I think it’s safe to say that many of them aren’t worth your time, attention, or all the resources that go into building it. Often when I hear about new AI products or boosts, my main takeaway is “why should I use this?” There are so many ideas that exist as AI for the sake of artificial intelligence or to try to find shortcuts that take humanity out of the equation. These are the products I struggle with – AI definitely has a place in modern life and these models are powerful, but I strongly believe they all need to be built with an actual human using it.
Here’s my main take on why Google’s AI efforts have caught my eye.
Where most of the AI industry is doubling down on lucrative applications like coding, Google is still trying to figure out where AI can be useful to the everyday person outside of a simple, generic chatbot like ChatGPT. Some great examples of this can be found in Google Home and Fitbit (now Google Health) – which is why I want to continue to see more from Google’s AI efforts, unlike many others that I generally struggle to care about.
Google I/O 2026 was a mix of both ways. On the one hand, there were some really useful, practical ideas. “Universal Basket” deal tracker and proactive online shopping cart has great potential. Usage “General UI” Creating interactive, user-friendly thumbnails in search is a great way to understand a topic rather than looking at a wall of text. But, on the other hand, there were some ideas that I didn’t quite believe in. Gemini Omni live video is undeniably impressive, but the social impact of creating such compelling video is huge – and the internet already it’s pretty full of artificial intelligence.
“Documents Live” it also worries me. The idea of turning to AI to help you outline is innocent enough, but Google’s on-stage example of using AI to create a last-minute speech you forgot to make yourself just feels… bad is the word I’m going to say, but the real feeling it brings to my mind is “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore”. I personally hate these AI shows that show people being lazy – it’s human nature to take the path of least resistance and I need Google and all these other AI companies need to stop acting like everyone else using these tools they do not take away humanity’s ability to think for itself.
AnywayI/O’s main focus seemed to be on “agents,” tools that let you hand over controls to (basically) AI to perform tasks on your behalf. Again, mixed feelings here. On the one hand, I can consider using these tools to speed up my existing workflows. There was a Gemini Spark a few interesting examplessuch as identifying fraudulent subscription charges on your credit card or moneySave and summarize deadlines from your inbox for easier viewing.
But even as I thought about how I could apply this to my life, I kept coming back to the same thought I had from the beginning about this era of generative AI – I just don’t believe it.
Time and time again, Gemini and every other AI tool I’ve tried to integrate into my life has at some point failed to do its job properly or confidently lied to me about what it was doing. This has gotten a bit better over time, but it’s still an inherent problem – our own Will Sattelberg recently started testing Google Health Coach and, on the first dayhe hallucinated a few miles of running he simply did not accept. My own experience with Coach has not produced the same results, but it is not uncommon for me to experience similar hallucinations or “confident lies” when connecting with various forms of Gemini. Yet we are constantly told that this is somehow normal.
This is where my concern with agents begins. I have no doubt that the tools Google is building here will be able to do what they promise, I’m just worried about when it will fail. Back to these two examples that Google provided – what if my agent completely misses one of the hidden fees when I’m on a tight budget? What if a project I’m working on has a random deadline? The agent will not leave say He will tell me with 100% certainty as always when something is wrong. With that in mind, should I just go in and check myself and am I even saving time at all?
The first thing we’ll get out of Gemini Spark “Daily brief”, a feature that intelligently accesses your data from other Google products to infer some of the things you need to solve. I’ve already started watching it and it’s really cool. He was able to extract relevant information from my search and Gmail, such as an appointment for a phone call (which I had never added to my calendar), and even used a previous conversation with Gemini Live about it. Neat! Helpful! However, this has drawn my recent research to a used EV for no apparent reason. It felt like going back to “AI for AI’s sake” because the summary he provided was completely useless.
Overall, I think Google I/O 2026 was still one of the best showcases of practical AI we’ve seen, especially recently, but it still cracked me up. Google continues to iterate and test new ideas while developing these practical applications – ie excellentand what we should demand from every AI company. But at the same time, there are so many places where I either don’t feel like I can trust what I’m seeing here, or it’s mostly artificial intelligence — and that’s not even touching on the ongoing changes to Search. destroys the network.
Here I am – equally optimistic about the future of Google’s AI efforts and concerned about the impact it will have.
And you? What do you think of Google I/O 2026?
This Week’s Top Stories
More from Google I/O 2026
There’s a ton more to come from Google I/O 2026, so here’s a quick list of the biggest highlights:
- Everything Google Announced at I/O 2026: Gemini, Search, Android XR, and More
- Gemini app introduces ‘Neural Expressive’ redesign, 3.5 Flash, 24/7 Spark agent and Daily Brief
- These are the first Android XR audio glasses coming this fall with iPhone support
- Gemini Omni, the “make it all” model, launches today with live video
- Google announces Wear OS 7 with Live Updates, widgets and more
One of the biggest revelations? YouTube Premium Lite is now included in Google AI Pro, which just creates this memory plan even better.
Introducing Google Health
Outside of I/O, the Fitbit app has officially been replaced by Google Health, an update rolling out to Android along with a handy new widget.
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Podcast
Abner and Damien take Pixelated on the road this week with an exclusive chat with Google’s Seang Chau and Dieter Bohn on this week’s episode!
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