Google's Project Astra AI to Debut on Samsung Galaxy S25 and Pixel Phones

Galaxy S25 and Pixel phones will be first to get Google's Project Astra features

Initially, these features will be available exclusively on the Galaxy S25 series and Pixel phones, with a rollout expected in the coming months. At Google I/O 2024, the company told us about Project Astra -- a prototype multimodal AI agent that can understand the world around its users. So far, Astra has shown impressive real-time interaction capabilities. It has been in the hands of Google's trusted testers for several months, who have used it for a range of tasks, including generating real-time recipe recommendations, creating stories based on artwork, taking guided city tours, solving math problems, and more. But today, Google has announced that the advanced AI agent is ready for its public debut.

Galaxy S25 Phones First to Feature Google's Project Astra AI Tech

Project Astra uses a person's phone camera or camera-equipped glasses to see the world around it and analyze what it sees. The Samsung Galaxy S25 will be the first family of phones to include Google's Project Astra, the company announced Wednesday at Samsung's Unpacked 2025 event. This gives the phone the ability to analyze the world around it through its camera and provide personalized answers to questions that chatbots can't replicate. Project Astra is a part of Googe's Gemini 2.0 which was announced at the 2024 Google I/O. Google Deepmind CEO and co-founder Demis Hassabis made the announcement during the Unpacked event. "Last month, we started to expand our Trusted Tester program for Project Astra, which is our research prototype exploring the future capabilities of a universal AI assistant that will be helpful in your everyday life," Hassabis said. "And now, we're so excited to be partnering with Samsung to bring some of its groundbreaking capabilities to the Gemini app. I'm delighted to announce that screen sharing and live video streaming is coming first to Android and the Galaxy S25 series. This means in the coming months, you'll be able to ask Gemini to reason about the things you see, whether it's on your phone or the world around you." Hassabis went on to show off some of the features. In one example, a users would be able to show Gemini a photo of themselves wearing size 38 pants and ask if it thinks a size 36 would fit. Another example was to walk someone through performing the windowpane test on a piece of dough while working on a recipe. "Our partnership with Samsung will help the future of AI through new form factors, like glasses or headsets to more agentic capabilities, like the ability to take actions on your behalf," Hassabis said. In CNET's hands-on with Project Astra, we noted that Project Astra had tons of potential as it was both faster and smoother than Meta's Ray-Ban glasses with its built-in AI. However, it may raise privacy concerns since it'll use the camera on the phone to see the world around it. Google says it's helping here by having tools built-in to prevent users from sharing personal data on accident. In addition to Project Astra, the Galaxy S25 family is also getting a slew of other AI features. Some examples include the new AI Select tool that will suggest actions based on what's on your phone screen while the photo gallery app will support conversational inquiries so you can find specific photos just by asking. The Galaxy S25 is available for pre-order now and will be shipped on Feb. 7.