AI continues to give me mixed feelings about the future, and that’s top of mind following another Gemini-heavy Google I/O this past week. On the one hand, Google continues to show some of the most practical and useful ideas for AI, but until I can trust it, I struggle to actually get excited about it.
There are a million ideas in the AI landscape, but I think it’s safe to say that a lot of those aren’t worth your time, attention, or all of the resources that went into building it. So often when I hear about new AI products or pushes, my takeaway is basically “why would I ever use this?” There are just so many ideas out there that exist as AI for the sake of AI, or for trying to come up with shortcuts that take humanity out of the equation. Those are the products I struggle with – AI absolutely has a place in modern life, and these models are powerful, but I firmly believe it should all be built with the actual human being using it in mind.
That’s my overarching thought into why Google’s AI efforts have been the ones largely catching my eye.
Where most of the AI industry has been doubling down on profitable applications such as coding, Google is still trying to figure out where AI can be helpful to the everyday person in places beyond a simple, generic chatbot like ChatGPT. Some great examples of that can be found in Google Home and Fitbit (now Google Health) – it’s why I’m actually keen to continue seeing more from Google’s AI efforts, as opposed to the many others that I struggle to care about at all.
Google I/O 2026 was a mix of both paths. On the one hand, there were some genuinely useful, practical ideas. “Universal Cart” as a deal tracker and proactive shopping cart that works across the web has massive potential. Using “Generative UI” in Search to create interactive, use-case-specific miniature apps is a great tool for understanding a topic rather than just looking at a wall of text. But, on the other hand, there were some ideas I wasn’t as convinced by. Gemini Omni’s lifelike video is undeniably impressive, but the social impact of being able to create such a convincing video is huge – and the internet is already full of enough AI slop.
“Docs Live” also makes me uneasy. The idea of rambling to an AI to help you create outlines is innocent enough, but Google’s on-stage example of using the AI to create a last-minute speech that you forgot to do yourself just feels… bad is the word I’ll go with, but the actual feeling it brings to mind is “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.” I personally hate these AI demos that basically just show people how to be lazy – it’s human nature to take the path of least resistance, and I need Google and all of these other AI companies to stop acting like everyone using these tools aren’t taking away humanity’s ability to think for themselves.
Anyway, the main focus of I/O very much felt as though it was on “agents,” the tools that let you pass the controls (mostly) to AI to get tasks done on your behalf. Again, mixed feelings here. On the one hand, I can get on board the idea of using these tools to speed up my existing workflows. Gemini Spark had a few interesting examples, like identifying rogue subscription fees on your credit card or pulling and summarizing deadlines out of your inbox for easier viewing.
But as much as I was thinking about how I might be able to apply this in my life, I kept coming back to the same thought I’ve had about this era of generative AI since the beginning – I simply do not trust it.
Time and time again, Gemini and every other AI tool I’ve tried to integrate into my life has, at some point, simply failed to do its task correctly, or confidently lied to me about what it’s doing. This has gotten better over time, slightly, but it’s still an inherent problem – just recently, our own Will Sattelberg started testing out the Google Health Coach and, on the first day, it hallucinated a several-mile run he simply didn’t take. My own experience with Coach hasn’t turned up the same results, but it’s not at all uncommon for me to run into similar hallucinations or “confident lies” when interacting with the various forms of Gemini. Yet, we’re constantly told that this is somehow normal.
That’s where my concern with agents comes in. I have no doubt that the tools Google is building out here are going to be able to do what they promise, I’m just worried about when it will inevitably fail. Going back to those two examples Google provided – what if my agent completely misses one of those hidden fees at a time where my budget is tight? What if it hallucinates a random deadline for a project I’m working on? The agent isn’t going to tell me when it got something wrong, it’s just going to say it with 100% confidence, as it always does. With that in mind, I just have to go in and check for myself and, at that point, am I even saving time?
The first thing we’re getting out of Gemini Spark is the “Daily Brief,” a feature that cleverly dives into your data from other Google products to pull out some things you might need to address. I’ve already started seeing this and, genuinely, it’s pretty cool. It was able to pull out relevant information from my browsing and Gmail, such as an appointment for a phone call (that I never added to my calendar) that even leveraged a previous conversation with Gemini Live on the subject. Neat! Useful! But it also pulled my recent research into a used EV for seemingly no reason. This felt like going back to “AI for the sake of AI,” because the summary it provided was utterly useless.
On the whole, I think Google I/O 2026 was still one of the best showcases of practical AI we’ve seen, especially recently, but it still left me split. Google continues to iterate and try new ideas as it builds out these practical applications – which is great, and what we should be demanding from every AI company. But, at the same time, there are so many places here where what I’m seeing is something I either don’t feel I can trust, or basically AI slop – and that’s not even to touch on continued changes to Search that seem to continue destroying the web.
That’s where I’m at – mixed between optimism for the future of Google’s AI efforts, and equally worried about the impact it will have.
What about you? What did you think of Google I/O 2026?
This Week’s Top Stories
More from Google I/O 2026
There’s a ton more from Google I/O 2026, so here’s a quick list of the biggest highlights:
- Everything Google announced at I/O 2026: Gemini, Search, Android XR, & more
- Gemini app rolling out ‘Neural Expressive’ redesign, 3.5 Flash, 24/7 Spark agent, & Daily Brief
- These are the first Android XR audio glasses, coming this fall with iPhone support
- Gemini Omni, the ‘create anything’ model, starts today with lifelike video
- Google announces Wear OS 7 with Live Updates, widgets, more
One of the biggest reveals? YouTube Premium Lite is now included in Google AI Pro, which just makes that storage plan even better.
Google Health rollout
Outside of I/O, the Fitbit app has officially been replaced by Google Health, with the update rolling out now on Android alongside a useful new widget.
More Top Stories
Podcast
Abner and Damien took Pixelated on the road this week, with a special chat with Google’s Seang Chau and Dieter Bohn on this week’s episode!
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