Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Gemini AI on Chrome OS! | Hands-on with NEW Chromebook Plus features”.
I don’t blame you. If you’re still recovering from hearing Google mention AI more than a 100 times as part of its IO keynote, it sounds like Gemini is coming to everything from your Gmail inbox to your next Instagram post and that’s on top of the AI features. Already baked into some pixel devices, IO was just the tip of the iceberg, as Google has just announced a Full Slate of features coming to its Chromebook plus lineup. After all, the Chromebook plus series already has twice the RAM and twice the storage of Base Chromebooks. So it’s about time it got put to a little better use.
You’Ll probably recognize some of these features as coming straight from the pixel lineup, but now they have quite a bit more screen real estate to work with. So, let’s check out a couple of the new features that emphasize the Plus in Google’s Chromebook plus series. The First new addition is one that we’ve come to know and love and spend a lot of time with, since it debuted on Google’s pixel 8 series and that’s generative wallpapers. We’Ve already spent more than our fair share of time, coming up with different ways to combine the prompts and just see what Google’s models will spit back to us. Now you can do the same thing just on a Chromebook Plus Google has added the ability to generate both everyday wallpapers and create fake backgrounds. For the next time, you hop into a Google meet in case you’re, trying to spice up what you look at every day or if your apartment’s just not quite clean enough for your next meeting. Now, the basics of generating a wallpaper on one of Google’s Chromebook plus models are exactly the same as they work on the pixel series. You pick out a madli style prompt.
You choose a color, you might choose a subject, but there’s a couple: different options. Since you’re filling out a laptop siiz display, you get a couple new categor ories like glow Scapes and characters and the ability to generate backgrounds based on individual letters of the alphabet, which is something that hasn’t quite come to a smartphone. Just yet, and at least in the case of the character-based backgrounds, it kind of works like a tile system where you’ll get the same character recreated over and over again, but different ones like glow, Scapes and Landscapes.
Look a lot more like they do on a pixel device and generative wallpapers are honestly one of the first things I jumped into when I set up my Chromebook plus, and it’s probably going to be the one I come back to the most. Google has also announced that it’s helped me write features coming to the Chromebook plus series, much to the joy of bad students and creators with writers block everywhere. As you can probably guess, it uses Google’s AI models to spice up any piece of text. You’Re working on you basically just have to rightclick and ask for help. I decided to see how help me write would tweak the script for this video and it only took a few seconds to do so.
I’M not going to tell you which part of the script Gemini wrote, but you can probably guess by the end of the video, it’s only a very small piece. Now. The main option for help me write is to change your tone whether you need a more formal, sound or a more casual voice, while you’re writing, both of which have some interesting Tendencies. I’Ve noticed that the formal version of help me right leans more towards giving a high school student a thesaurus, while the Casual version kind of feels like Steve PMI, walking around with a skateboard and trying to blend in either way. It’S good enough and quick enough right off the bat that it makes my job a little bit easier, but I’m also kind of nervous as a writer who would much rather write for himself moving on to something maybe a little bit less scary. The next new Chromebook plus feature is one that you probably already recognize from the pixel 8 series and that’s magic editor. Yes, you can now use a mouse or a trackpad to resize, reshape or remove unwanted objects from your images in Google photos.
Magic editor works exactly the same way it does on a Chromebook plus, as it does on a pixel 2. You just open the edit options, choose the magic, editor button and start selecting your subject. It is, of course, only limited to the Google photos app, but magic editor on a Chromebook Plus is as fast and accurate as I would have hoped.
I wasn’t quite sure how it would handle the three people in front of a building on New York’s Highline, but they disappeared Without a Trace and didn’t leave any weird artifacts behind which you would run into a little bit in the early days of magic editor. So, looking at the Two Shots, you can hardly tell anyone. Was there honestly, I really appreciate the trackpad based controls as someone who tended to fat finger or scribble way too far over subjects when trying to use magic, editor on the pixel 8 Pro instead, and if the more specific featur we just mentioned, Aren’t Enough all Chromebook Plus models now come with Gemini built right in Google’s AI powered assistant, has a permanent place on your taskbar, making it much easier to ask for generated images, get some help with coding or go into more complicated processes like asking for help planning an upcoming trip and The Chromebook plus series doesn’t just use the basic Gemini model; either it comes with Gemini Advance right out of the box.
That means it has a larger token window, the ability to upload and summarize, Google, Docs and PDFs, and the ability to integrate with other services like Gmail, to keep you on top of your inbox without really having to think about it. Now, normally Gemini Advance comes as part of the Google one AI Premium plan, which also includes 2 terab of storage per month at a rate of 20 bucks a month, but new Chromebook plus users will get a full year of the service to try it out with No extra cost and that’s not a bad reason to pick up a new laptop. Unfortunately, existing Chromebook plus users will have to pay the subscription right off the bat there’s no free trial coming to older models, since I hadn’t actually played around with Gemini too much.
I figured I would try one of its more ambitious features and one that I’ve been kind of disappointed, not to see rabbit’s pocket sized R1 figure out quite yet trip planning, I’m headed to Amsterdam in the fall. It’S a city and a country that I’ve never been to so I asked Gemini for some advice. It handed back a jam-packed 4-day schedule, complete with average weather for that time of year and some other tips for things that I could fit in between visits to bigger museums. I’M not going to lie it squeezed several hours of planning and figuring out logistics into a couple seconds of Ty, which is both much easier and maybe takes a little bit of the fun out of planning. But it’s easy enough to just use as a jumping off point. Google also announced a couple other features coming to the entire Chromebook lineup, not just the Chromebook plus models.
You can now record gifts as if you were taking a screenshot set up your Chromebook more easily, with an Android phone and just using a QR code and use a gaming dashboard to remap controls in just a couple seconds so that you can play swipe based games. That you know from your Android phone using using your mouse and keyboard, oh and there’s even more coming to the Chromebook plus series later in 2024, some of which Google wasn’t quite ready to show off just yet Google te’s that help me read will soon join help. Me write, which means that you can get much more simplified explanations of some of the denser articles. You’Re trying to read and live, translate and live transcription are both on their way straight over from the pixel series.
Google is also revamping its focus mode so that you can pair a timer with a YouTube music playlist so that you can get some work done without having to actively jump into do not disturb, and when you come back to your Chromebook after a time away. It’S also going to automatically save menus and different processes that you were into before you left, so you can jump in with a single click. We can’t say exactly how soon some of those features will come to Chrome OS, but in the meantime, there’s plenty to explore with six new Chromebook plus models and three standard Chromebooks on the way. Now, in the words of Gemini itself check it out, Google has added a bunch of new AI features to the Chromebook plus devices, whether you’re a Chromebook fanatic, or just curious about the latest tech stuff head over over to androidauthority.com for even more in-depth info. And if you’ll excuse me, I think Gemini just took script writing out of my job description. .