Google Delays Launch of Project Astra AI Agent to 2025

We will have to wait quite a while to see Google's anticipated Project Astra - Softonic

Google has postponed the launch of its Project Astra until 2025, an advanced artificial intelligence technology that promises "multimodal" experiences in real-time. The decision was made public during the third-quarter earnings report, in which Sundar Pichai, the company's CEO, explained that they are building "experiences where AI can see and reason about the world around you." Project Astra would have a deeper understanding of the environment, allowing AI agents not only to answer questions but also to perform specific tasks for the user. In a presentation during the I/O developers conference in May, Google showcased some features of Astra, such as its ability to identify places and answer questions about objects on screen, like the neighborhood where a user is located or the name of a specific part of a bicycle. Although it was initially speculated that a consumer version would be released this December, everything indicates that it is an independent project from Astra. And Astra is not the only thing Google has in mind regarding the future of AI. This same week, the company announced that it is developing "Project Jarvis," an AI agent capable of controlling a PC's browser and performing various tasks.

Project Astra delay means Google's AI agent won't arrive until next year -- what we know

Back in May, at the Google I/O developer conference, Google announced that it was working on a new AI assistant it dubbed "Project Astra". Astra is designed to be a universal AI agent for everyday life, with the ability to utilize your phone's camera and voice recognition software to aid you. All while understanding commands and responding like a real human being. Google originally promised that Astra would come to Google's Gemini app sometime "later this year". That timeline has now been moved to sometime in 2025, with Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirming the news during the Q3 earnings call for parent company Alphabet. Pichai didn't go into any specifics, only saying that Google is "building out experiences where AI can see and reason about the world around you" -- adding that Google is aiming to "ship experiences like this as early as 2025". It's unclear what experiences will be coming next year, and if anything Google initially announced will be available before the end of the year. Considering Apple is set to release its own camera-based AI tool, called Visual Intelligence, to iPhone 16 at some point in December, you'd hope that Google would be hustling to avoid lengthy delays. The use of the word "experiences" also suggests that there may be more to Project Astra than the camera-centric mode. However Pichai could also be referring to the fact Astra will be available on Android phones and smart glasses -- which will likely offer very manifestations of what Astra can do. Google's AI ambitions don't start and end with Astra, though. Pichai also says that Google's teams are "actively working on performance improvements and new capabilities for our range of models." He also confirmed that a third generation Gemini Model, likely Gemini 2.0, is "progressing well", but didn't offer any additional details. Rumor is that Gemini 2.0 could be announced as soon as December, which would mean there's at least some good AI news coming before the end of the year. As for the rest of Google's services, and their eventual integration with AI, Pichai said that there's an "aggressive roadmap ahead for 2025". So expect Gemini and other Google AI features to spread rather rapidly over the next 12-14 months.

Google says its next-gen AI agents won't launch until 2025 at the earliest | TechCrunch

Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the timeline in remarks during Google's Q3 earnings call today. "[Google is] building out experiences where AI can see and reason about the world around you," he said. "Project Astra is a glimpse of that future. We're working to ship experiences like this as early as 2025." Project Astra, which Google demoed at its I/O developer conference in May 2024, encompasses a range of technologies, from smartphone apps that can recognize the world around them and answer related questions to AI assistants that can perform actions on a user's behalf. In a pre-recorded demo during I/O, Google showed a Project Astra prototype answering questions about things within view of a smartphone's camera, like which neighborhood a user might be in or the name of a part on a broken bicycle. The Information reported this month that Google was planning to launch a consumer-focused agent experience as early as this December -- one capable of purchasing a product, booking a flight, and other such chores. That now seems unlikely -- unless the experience in question is divorced from Project Astra. Anthropic recently became one of the first companies with a large generative AI model able to control apps and web browsers on a PC. But, illustrating how challenging building AI agents can be, Anthropic's struggles with many basic tasks.