Google I/O unveils AI tools to transform Android development and app discovery

Google Unwraps Plans to Put AI to Work for Android, Web Developers

Screenshots showing how you can use the Ask Play AI feature to inquire about an app's features. (Credit: Google) Google's AI news at Google I/O didn't stop at people who use Android and Chrome apps; the company also unveiled a wide-ranging set of AI tools for people developing those apps. In the Play Store, the changes will have AI serving as both a marketing and a management assistant for developers. Potential customers will be able to discover apps in Google's Gemini and have the chatbot send them directly to Play Store pages. Those curious about a particular app's features or requirements can ask their own questions in the Ask Play Q&A interface. On a developer's side of the screen, new AI-driven Play Store management tools will be able to create new listings in response to keyword-search insights, automate catalog management, evaluate payment glitches to give people judged as low-risk subscribers a little more time in payment-required content, and present retention offers to customers who click a "cancel" button. Google recently cut its Play Store charges for developers; automated help like this may make its remaining take of 10 to 20%, depending on such factors as whether it's a new purchase or a subscription or if the developer clears more than $1 million a year on the Play Store, more palatable. Android programmers can also put AI to work coding their apps via prompts in Google's AI Studio. But Google is focusing this venture into vibe coding only on a few categories of apps, such as "personal utilities and simple social apps," apps that leverage device hardware like cameras and accelerometers, and "AI-powered experiences" built around Google Gemini AI. Other changes for Android developers include a command-line interface for Android coding that can be directed by such programming-assistant AIs as Anthropic's Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex, new options in the Engage SDK to market apps to potential users, and short-form Play Shorts videos to advertise app features and TikTok-ify your Play Store experience a little more. And game authors can use the Play Games Sidekick overlay to provide coaching in more Android games. In Chrome, the news leads with the addition of a trial version of WebMCP, a proposed web standard for the Model Context Protocol interface that lets AI agents connect directly to a site's APIs. Google lists Booking.com, Credit Karma, Etsy, Expedia, Instacart, Redfin, Shopify, Target, and TurboTax as early partner sites. Other AI features coming to Chrome include expanded built-in AI tools that run directly in the browser instead of on a server and AI assistance with writing, debugging, and optimizing code. The non-AI news about Chrome begins with tests of two new web-coding options, HTML-in-Canvas API and element-scoped view transitions, that Google says will allow more app- and game-like interfaces, and includes tools like "Core Web Vitals measurement" for app-like pages and better compatibility stats to let site operators know how much of their audience is using browsers that support these modern features. Among such wonky bits, this part caught our eyes: "Immediate UI Mode." That lets a site present a unified password-or-passkey login interface that should streamline passkey authentication-something that too many sites still struggle with.

I/O 2026 is bringing more AI to Google Play - Engadget

This year's Google I/O has introduced a pile of updates for the Google Play storefront. Most of the new features are developer-focused as usual, but there are a couple standout changes to the way that regular Android users will interact with the store. We knew that AI would be a big factor in Google's upcoming plans, with Gemini Intelligence announced during the Android Show: I/O Edition, and of course there's more artificial intelligence to be had. Google Play is rolling out a new AI-powered feature called Ask Play. It's an overlay that allows users to ask natural language questions in order to find new apps. This version expands on the previous Q&A tool, which also leveraged AI to answer most queries for discovery. If you find you're getting into a more complex chat with the assistant, the Ask Play highlights can show a top-level summary of your search at the top of the results page. Google is also bringing some improvements to the gaming experience with new features for Play Games Sidekick, which the company debuted last year. The in-game overlay will now include social information, such as who among your friends also plays the active app and what achievements they've unlocked. Apple has provided that type of information in Game Center for years, so bringing Android to parity is a welcome addition. After the initial wave of about 100 supported titles, Sidekick will be available for all participating games beginning this summer.

Google expands AI-powered app discovery and Android development tools at I/O - SiliconANGLE

Google expands AI-powered app discovery and Android development tools at I/O Google LLC's Android team today announced it's employing deeper integration of generative artificial intelligence and agentic AI to help mobile developers and publishers connect with customers and users. The company said at its annual Google I/O 2026 developer conference that said it's expanding how users can find apps in the Google Play store on Android and the web using Gemini. This manifests as Ask Play within the store, a new AI-powered overlay experience with Gemini under the hood that turns app discovery into a natural conversation. The new experience can access the full context of different app experiences and listen to what the user wants through an iterative discussion to help them find what they want in the store. More and more users are turning to AI chatbots for discovery, and with Ask Play highlights, users can get a high-level summary of searches directly within search results to help them decide what apps or games they want from the ever-growing catalog. Google also announced updates to Engage SDK, which helps bridge and surface content between devices. For example, if users spend time watching a TV show on their Google TV and then walk away, they might notice a Play listing showing them that they can continue watching on their Android tablet when they're away from home and have free time. Starting next month, existing users will see content notices directly in store listings. New tablet surfaces, including home screen Collections, are coming soon. Engage SDK surfaces can now scale across more than 80 different Play markets. To aid developers in building the next generation of Android apps, Google showcased new capabilities for the Android command line interface, or CLI, now in stable version 1.0, that integrate with powerful agentic AI capabilities. This is a tool that, instead of running as a window on a screen, runs at a lower level using a text interface, which is closer to where most large language models operate. It also means that AI agents can "talk" to the CLI in its own language and get work done, allowing users to hook up whatever AI coding tool they want. Developers can quickly get up and running with an Android plugin package for Google's Antigravity agentic coding environment, which now includes the Android CLI and skills. This provides Antigravity with tools and capabilities to use the CLI to perform the core tasks for mobile app development. To add more options, the updated CLI version introduced a new "android studio" command that allows the agent of developer choice to use the contextual capabilities of Android Studio to understand and perform actions. By running Android Studio alongside an AI agent using Android CLI, the agent can more readily navigate an Android codebase and better understand the ins and outs of projects. Google AI Studio, the company's browser-based prototyping environment for developers powered by Gemini, can now build entire high-quality native Android apps in minutes. The new update brings the capabilities originally introduced through Gemini in Android Studio directly into the web-based environment. Native Android apps are built primarily in Kotlin and Jetpack Compose and are often iterated on using desktop editors such as JetBrains, not normally web-based environments. However, with this update, developers can launch a web browser, describe what they want and have the agent go to work in the cloud. Using a Google Play developer account, it's also possible to publish directly from AI Studio for testing. The agent will automatically create the app record, package its bundle and upload it to an internal testing track in Google Play Developer Console. The app will become available to install within minutes, and it can be iterated upon within AI Studio. Moving beyond the browser is also simple. If the developer wants to break out of the web, AI Studio can wrap the project up into a ZIP format or export it directly to GitHub. This will allow developers to readily import anything built in the cloud into a different AI coding tool or development environment.