This is all powered by Google’s latest on-device Gemini Nano model, meaning nothing is processed in the cloud. If you enable this feature, it’ll replace your voicemail, so you’ll have to choose if you want to use Take a Message or the standard voicemail function.
AI-Generated Voice for Translations
Courtesy of Joel Chokkattu
Real-time translations over phone calls are becoming a staple feature on most new smartphones. It allows two people to speak to each other in a different language over the phone, with their translated words usually read out by an AI assistant. Google’s taking that feature and going a step further—it actually generates an approximation of your voice, so that your translated words come through almost sounding like you to the person on the other end.
I got a demo of this feature and watched as a Google employee spoke on a phone call in German. Google created an artificial version of his voice and used it to deliver the English translations, allowing the caller to hear what the German caller sounds like in their native tongue. It wasn’t perfect—the English sometimes came through with a British accent—but it sounded close, and could even pick up the person’s tone.
Google says no audio is ever recorded, and the data isn’t stored. This is powered by an on-device model that uses a short snippet of when the person starts speaking to translate the voice. It’s only available in a few languages, like English, German, Japanese, and Spanish.
New Journal App
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Taking a cue from Apple, Google now has its own Journal app. Depending on what goals you choose when you first set up the app, you’ll get prompts on what to journal about, and after you write, you’ll get an AI-powered reflection that offers some insight into your well-being. Google uses emojis to tag the overall tone of the journal entry so you can see how things change over a month. You can lock the Journal app behind a pin or passcode.
Daily Hub
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Google’s also taking a page from Samsung’s Now Brief with a feature called Daily Hub. It’s not as in-your-face as Samsung’s tool. Instead, it’ll either appear in Google’s At a Glance widget on the home page two or three times per day, or you can access it directly from Google Discover. It shows upcoming calendar events for the day, reminders powered by Magic Cue, and it’ll even suggest new activities for you to try based on your Google Search history.
Raise to Talk to Gemini
Courtesy of Joel Chokkattu
On the new Pixel Watch 4, you can now just raise your wrist and Gemini will activate, eliminating the need to say a hot word or press a button to trigger the assistant. Gemini itself is fairly new to Wear OS, only having rolled out a few months ago. It’s much better at natural language, meaning you can ask it anything without following a rigid query and still get an answer. That includes summarizing the last email you received, setting reminders, or figuring out what wine pairs best with a charcuterie board.
