In the wake of another big Made by Google event (check out our Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel Watch 3 hands-on reviews for some details), Google also released some significant AI-powered upgrades to Pixel phones old and new.
There are four upgrades in total, as described in a Google blog post. The first is Guided Frame, which gives users voice instructions when framing a shot – for example, when there is a face in the picture, and even warns about low lighting conditions.
Guided Frame has been around for a while to help people with low vision, but it’s moving from the accessibility settings in Android and is now available in the main camera settings. Previously, you had to enable the screen reader to access it.
Watch on
Additionally, Google promises improvements to object detection, face filtering in group photos, and object focusing. This should result in a more useful and accurate Guided Frame experience that’s easier to achieve.
It also improves the Pixel-exclusive Magnifier feature, which essentially lets you use your phone camera like a powerful magnifying glass to get a better look at the world around you. It also adds a new Selfie mode to help with things like touching up makeup.
Magnifier also gets the ability to search for specific words in your surroundings (like an airport gate number), a picture-in-picture mode so you can still see the bigger context, and the ability to switch between camera lenses.
Subtitles and transcriptions
Next, we have Live Caption (which subtitles videos on Android in real time using artificial intelligence) and Live Transcribe (which works in a similar way but converts spoken audio into text and translates it instantly at the same time).
Both features add seven new languages – Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Turkish and Vietnamese – along with offline access for Live Transcribe so you can use it in foreign areas without an internet connection.
If you have a foldable phone—perhaps something like the brand new Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold—there’s also a new dual-screen mode for Live Transcribe. This means one screen can show one language while the other display on the back of the phone shows the other language.
“With dual-screen mode, you can easily place your phone in table position on any surface to better view transcriptions,” says Google. “Now everyone at the table can follow the conversation – whether you’re attending a meeting or chatting with friends over dinner.”
Google’s blog posts don’t say which older Pixel phones will get these features, but if they’re currently available on your phone, you’ll likely get the updates as they roll out. Specifically, for the Magnifier feature, which is available on the Google Play Store, you’ll need a Pixel 5 or later.
We’re still going through all the announcements from the Made by Google event and thinking about the new hardware that Google unveiled. We also saw some pretty major updates to the Google Gemini AI assistant.
