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Jay Castronakis
Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of David and Nilay both being mysteriously unavailable at the same time. So we've got to fill in. I'm Jay Castronakis, executive editor of the Verge.
Hayden Field
I'm Hayden Field, senior AI reporter at
Jay Castronakis
the Verge and we've got a lot to talk about today. Google I O just wrapped up 15 minutes ago. It was as long as ever, a nice relaxing two hour presentation and I think they talked about AI for, I don't know, about an hour 45 of it.
Hayden Field
Yep. And the word agents. It was non stop like every 10 seconds.
Jay Castronakis
Agents. Agents is the sizzle reel word of the year. Yes, yes, yes. And we have a lot of that to talk about. David, unfortunately under the weather. Nilai, if you were following along on the site, he was live vlogging. He is out in Mountain View so expect more from him. He's out there for some fun stuff that we'll have for you, I believe next week week. So stay tuned. But for now we're here to talk about Google I O and all the big announcements. If you have thoughts, questions, hit us up in the comments and we'll be checking them out. So there was a lot that happened. It is hard to even know where to start. Tons of Gemini announcements, some huge announcements for search. There was a big aside on shopping, but I do think agents is the buzzword of the year. Everything kind of laddered up to agents, including, you know, the shopping stuff. Right. Ultimately, that was agents, the search stuff. Ultimately that's agents. Everything seems to be about agents. I'm curious, Hayden, you spoke to folks over there and you came away with a bunch of thoughts about, you know, what they are thinking about what 2026 looks like in terms of what the purpose of AI is. What do you think they are trying to accomplish here?
Hayden Field
Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like I've been covering agents for years, like since, you know, late 2022, when generative AI was, you know, officially a thing, basically with ChatGPT's release. And I feel like every single year that I've covered them, there's been a different, like, milestone in each year. So it's like the first year was the year of ideation in 2023, and then the next year was the year of deployment. Then we had the year of experimentation. And these are all terms that are coming from like, either both users and the leaders. So it's like this is kind of the vibes that everyone's getting on both sides. And this year I'm really feeling like from all the Google announcements and from like interviewing the CTO of deepminded stuff, it's going to be the year of usefulness, like actual usefulness.
Jay Castronakis
We hope, we hope they're not a big promise.
Hayden Field
They're not out yet, so we really don't know. But I will say that, you know, we've had promises of these things actually being useful and being able to do what they say they're going to do for a really long time. And I'm always really skeptical and it usually doesn't happen. Besides, like coding, of course, that's where they really shined. But I do think that if anyone's going to make them useful, it's Google because of all the integrations they can seamlessly have with like, Docs, Shop sheets, Gmail, calendar, everything else. And it looks like they're kind of learning from their mistakes this year because a lot of their announcements they made about agents, they were, you know, not to say like copying, but kind of copying and like learning from Openclaw, ChatGPT, Pulse, Codex, Claude, Cowork, like they were really taking A lot of the best features of all these competitors and just like found of integrating them into their own agent plans. And I think that's going to work pretty well for them because they're Google and they can easily seamlessly integrate all this stuff into their own tools that we all use every day, like photos, Gmail, et cetera. And their new two agents that they were talking about the most, the Daily Brief and Gemini Spark, I think are going to be pretty, I think they're finally listening to like what people actually want with AI agents, which has been a problem in the past. Like, it's like, do you really need it to like Scour50 websites to find the perfect pair of shoes or do you just want it to like give you a daily briefing on what your day looks like and like how long it's going to take you to get to point A, to point B and then maybe help plan an event that you're planning, like a wedding or a block party. We saw examples like that in the stream, so and in the reporter briefing call the day before. So that's kind of what I saw. I think they're at least hoping to make this the actual year of usefulness for AI agents, but I can't confirm that until we actually test them.
Jay Castronakis
I mean, this is what's so complicated, right? They are starting to have these abilities, but I actually think that finding ways to put them to use, figuring out things that I do want to offload to AI, finding things that I trust AI to handle correctly, like that's actually a really big gap that, you know, I, I things like Daily Brief are like baby's first AI thing. Like it, you can maybe trust it. It's really, really low stakes. If it tells you the wrong thing, like, you're probably going to know it's not necessarily giving it full access to your computer like you've done with openclaw. On the other hand, they're also launching their own version of that, which is Gemini Spark, which you don't have to go out and buy a Mac Mini. Like with openclaw, it'll run in the cloud, but they're also going to give it access to your Mac if you have the Mac app. And so it'll be able to do those open claw things and run wild with your stuff. Maybe not as wild. They said that you have to specifically choose which files it has access to each time. But it's really interesting. Everything that Google is trying to do is to make this more useful, but they're making it more useful with agents, but they are trying to find the specific spots like with daily brief and like with search where it will just kind of automatically do these AI things for you so you don't have to invent them.
Hayden Field
Right. And there also something I thought was interesting about Spark is that it, you know, like one of the memes that came out of like all the openclaw craze was like, you know, leaving your laptop open 247 and like letting these agents work for you 24. 7. And ever a lot of people in tech were like, oh, I can't even sleep, I can't, I can't even move away because I'm getting so much, you know, done. Even though that was kind of like a productivity, we don't know if it was like, you know, productivity for productivity's sake or if, you know, people were actually accomplishing that much. It kind of depended on who you were. But something interesting about Spark is that it's cloud based, it can run 24. 7 without keeping your laptop open and it can sync across like the Web, Android and iOS. So I think it's helpful that Google has so many resources here so they can just like eat the cost of this and just be like, you know, yeah, go ahead and go crazy, go wild, run these 24 7. We'll, we'll, we'll handle it. And you know, obviously, you know, they have subscription plans and everything, but they're actually cutting the cost of two of their or they're introducing a new lower cost subscription plan for Ultra and then they're cutting the cost of their top tier ultra subscription. So it's like, I think they're really trying to compete with everyone here by being like, okay, we're Google, we have more resources, we can kind of get, you know, temporarily eat some of these costs. And the biggest complaint a lot of people have had lately about agent stuff is just the speed and the cost. And Google's kind of trying to undercut its competitors in both areas right now.
Jay Castronakis
This is true and I, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here. But they, they also had Gemini 3.5 flash new model. And they mostly emphasized that it, it is faster, it is a little bit more efficient, it's lower cost in certain applications. And I think they're seeing this is the area where it impacts them number one. But also the developers, right. If you're paying for this stuff, you know, you, you've got a budget, you got a budget, you can't be burning through. They said there's like a, I don't even know what was it over a quadrillion tokens were being you know, processed
Hayden Field
like it's and over and a ton of companies were using more than a trillion per was it month a trillion dollar daily tokens.
Jay Castronakis
A lot of concerning honestly.
Hayden Field
And they said that like I don't know a lot of the startups and like you know, smaller company leaders I've been talking to lately, their biggest complaint has been having to do all these crazy calculations on their side trying to figure out the recipe for which models they should use for what and you know, just trying to cut costs in any way they can to like a legal startup. Maybe they're using the more powerful models for like you know, triaging some evidence or certain aspects of like plaintiff lawyers good jobs, I don't know enough about plaintiff lawyers jobs but the more complicated aspects and then they're using the cheap models for the simpler tasks and like refining that ratio all the time. And so Sundar was saying, you know, Gemini 3.5 flash specifically it's a big cost saver. It can be half or one third the cost of some of its comparable competitors. And that if you shifted like 80% of your workload as a company to Gemini 3.5flash then you could, and you were using a trillion daily tokens, you could save more than $1 billion annually. So that's obviously kind of a cherry picked example but still shows you know, they're listening to people being like hey, we're spending a ton of our time just figuring out how possibly to save some costs.
Jay Castronakis
It also shows they know where, where the interest in the money is which is encoding right now this is the biggest use case, it is the biggest way that they are going to get corporate customers. And I, it is not clear to me that Google's solution has been anybody's favorite. Right. It's Claude, it's Cursor. I see people in the chat saying that anti gravity, their, their harness for, for agencies is not very good. So this is a, this is a problem, right? It's, they're trying to focus on this stuff with the, the new Flash model. They're trying to speed things up, they're trying to make things more efficient. But coding has not been the area where Google has excelled so far. Right. They've been focused on I think these much more tangible applications because they're at Google, they're focused on can they make a model that works really, really, really fast when you search for something. And I genuinely think that they're quite good at that compared to I think the alternatives. But as for coding stuff, I tried, I don't even know. I think it was AI Studio shortly after it originally came out and got absolutely nowhere. Whereas I paid anthropic $20 for Claude code access and I cannot stop making apps with it. And it's like I, I don't need these apps. Like I need to stop. It's not a good use of my time, it's not a good use of tokens, but it's so easy and so capable. And I think one of the questions here is can they get there? Can they write? They're improving agents, they're improving their harnesses, can they make it easier for anyone to do this stuff and especially for developers to do this stuff? So they will switch to Google's platform?
Hayden Field
Yeah, one of the things they announced was like, they keep calling it like anti gravity 2.0. So like expanding Anti Gravity so that it can just be a like full on agentic development platform beyond just coding. So they're introducing like a new standalone desktop app which they want to call like a central hub for agent interaction. They're just like really going all in on, on the marketing here and you know, just trying to kind of court developers and get them to switch. And so it's interesting. Like I think the pricing will help there but you know, like people said like the harness hasn't been that good, so we'll see. And also I remember like, I don't know when Gemini 3 came out, everyone temporarily of course, as they always do for like a week, was like Google won the race. Like it's, it's over. And then like a week later or a couple weeks later, you know, Claude kind of stole the thunder with coding coding prowess. And then, you know, it's held onto that for months in terms of the hype. And so we'll see if the next few models that come out in the 3.5 suite kind of take, take some of that hype away or not.
Jay Castronakis
So we should talk about those, we should talk about the models, we should talk about some of the Gemini specific updates. So I think the first thing from a consumer perspective is there's like a new design in the Gemini app. It's glowy, it's dark mode, like it, it's very nice, it's very lovely. I, I don't think this will improve the AI experience dramatically. They're making a big deal out about, about it. They're calling the design language Neural expressive, which I do not think sounds cool.
Hayden Field
Yeah, it's like it Kind of sounds like, like a something you'd have to, like, get medicated for. I don't know.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah, they should have worked on that. But, you know, behind that is I, I think a zillion and a half different Gemini updates and new models. So we Already talked about 3.5 flash. 3.5 Pro is coming with the summer or something like that. They're throwing, they now have different Gemini live conversation modes that they're just shoving into every single product. They're making it more accessible within the Gemini app. They're allowing you to have a live conversation with your Gmail account, which is one of the, like, I don't, I get it. I get that if you have the technology, you're like, why not? I don't foresee using this.
Hayden Field
Here's the thing, this Gmail search is so horrible that maybe I wouldn't use it. Like, honestly, like, it's the, it's the type of thing I would never use if the Gmail search wasn't so bad. But, like, I can literally be, quote, searching the title of an email and it won't come up. And yet, like, I'll go find it myself. And it's there.
Jay Castronakis
This is when you've hit rock bottom at an airport looking for, like, a reservation number. You're, you're like, I guess I will talk to it. I believe you actually have to pay. I, I, I might have it wrong. I, I forget which one it is. They're, they're adding live talking to, to like, Google Docs as well. And for some of them, you have to pay for like a hundred bucks a month. And it's like, I don't know if that's the one you needed to pay. Gate. I like, there's not, because a lot
Hayden Field
of them are free. And I'm like, I was a little surprised about, like, what's free and what's not.
Jay Castronakis
It is, I think for Google in particular, it's like, anthropic. I'm like, yeah, they need money. Like, I understand with Google, it's like, oh, if you guys have to charge $100 for these features, I don't want. Like, you must be losing a lot.
Hayden Field
Yeah, but then it's like, it's funny because some of the more complex ones are just free, like, information agents at part of their search overhaul is offering, like, information agents to basically just like, you know, which are supposed to roll out, I think, to everyone this summer, and they're supposed to do research on your behalf or like, alert you kind of like a Personal assistant would anytime something happens. So like if you're like watching a certain part of the stock market or you're like trying to track the weather or even like flights, maybe they didn't mention flights, but it seems like from what they talked about, like, maybe even like flight price dropping, like, you know, things like that. It'll monitor for you and just email you when it happens or, you know, ping you somehow when it happens. And so that's free. And then also, yeah, the, the custom experiences and the, they were really into the haptic, the haptic stuff in the, in the app. So cool. Yeah, they're, they're into it.
Jay Castronakis
I don't know all that matters if maybe if the app is cool enough, the, the vibe will shift on people's reaction to, to non stop AI. Yeah. So the other big model they announced, and the other big model they announced is Gemini Omni, which they are calling a model that I believe I'm going to misquote this, but they're saying it's a model that can accept any input and generate any output. And this sounds like a very, very big deal. And yet, despite how big of a deal it is, they are doing it. They're giving very little explanation to what this is or why it is or what comes next for it. But right now it's basically just a video generation model. And you might think to yourself, hey, don't they already have one called veo? And yes, Google has now created a second video generation model and it is not clear why, but this new one can accept any kind of input. So you can throw a PDF and some photos and a song at it and it'll use all of that to generate a video for you. Whereas VO is just text to video. And I guess their long term perspective is that they want this model to be, I guess, much more multimodal to a degree that other models are not.
Hayden Field
Yeah, they want to like combine Gemini's text intelligence with its video and image models. Basically they're trying to combine everything they already have into one. And also they just really want to go all in on world models, which is kind of, if you remember, like when OpenAI canceled Sora, they didn't say they were going to never use it again or like just scrap the whole thing. They said they were going to instead use the research behind it and the model behind it to develop world models or do world model research. So this is kind of the new big thing that has been happening for a little while and Google's leaning all into it too. With world models because they think, and The CTO of DeepMind said this too, that this is going to be the next big step to AGI. So Google DeepMind is one of the only companies I've talked to recently that isn't kind of trying to get away from the AGI term. They're like all in there, like, yeah, we gotta get to AGI. And this is how world models. So yeah, Omni is that for them. They, you know, gave a lot of examples like giving it a simple prompt like give me a, you know, claymation explainer of protein folding and then getting a video back and you know. Yeah, just covering all the inputs you provided, like text, image, video, voice, whatever. And the good news is it's, it includes Synth id. So hopefully the videos you output will, you'll be able to tell if they're AI generated. But as we know, people can get around those.
Jay Castronakis
It's really interesting because they, they introduced Omni with this sort of big hype up about world models. And the, the way I've seen world models used so far is these sort of interactive video generation experiences where you kind of just like, it's like you move the arrow keys and a world generates around you as though you were playing a video game. And then the world immediately forgets what is around you because they're not working yet. And it's very cool. And they set this up as though, okay, this world models are the future. So we've created Omni. Is Omni a world model? That's not clear to me. They did not specify that.
Hayden Field
They told me it was and they said it's critical for the AGI journey. The AGI journey and from two points of view, one is like understanding the world and then reasoning about it as a big part of intelligence. And then also the fact that like our intelligence is built in this 3D world. So they think of it as like a way to make their models much smarter because they're in, they're learning how to interact like physically with the world and eventually like Google hasn't said this, but a lot of times when a company is working on world models, sometimes they're like unsaid. Eventual goal is to basically give their AI model a body in the world. Like, you know, it's a way to, you know, create smart robots, robotic system. So we'll see.
Jay Castronakis
They forgot to mention that. I will actually. Okay. Actually Sean Hollister on our team got, got an exclusive demo. He, he went by Mountain View a day or so ago and got a look at so Google Beam, which is the, I think, current name for Starline, which is their, like, fancy, like 3D video chat service, which I, it costs like 25 grand. There are probably a single digit number of them in existence. They're really cool demos and I don't know why anyone would buy them. But they, they, they showed them a demo where they're making a like 3D fake woman who is, you know, powered by AI. I don't know why, I don't know why, but this is.
Hayden Field
There's like, it's also like, happening with Omni. You can apparently, like create a custom avatar of yourself and drop yourself into, like, the videos you create. But again, it kind of reminds me of Sora and like, why, you know?
Jay Castronakis
But actually, Travis is telling me we can throw to the video for this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's play a clip.
Hayden Field
You're the first journalist to test out this preview demo with me. Pretty groundbreaking stuff.
Jay Castronakis
This is Google Beam, the $25,000 teleconferencing
Sponsor/Ad Voice
system that makes it feel like the
Jay Castronakis
other person is in the same room. Google wanted to create an AI agent that isn't just text on your screen or a voice in your ear. It's something you can walk up and talk to to too.
Sponsor/Ad Voice
What am I holding up right now?
Hayden Field
Ah, I see now in your left hand you have what looks like a transparent phone case with a magnetic ring built in, probably for MagSafe.
Jay Castronakis
And in your right, a small circular accessory.
Hayden Field
Is that a magnetic ring stand or a grip that attaches to it?
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yeah, that's right.
Jay Castronakis
I'll be honest, it's all over the place right now. It does Google things fairly well, pulling up maps, speaking in multiple languages. Because it can see its surroundings. It can answer questions about a book, even recognize a sign language sign or two. Here's another hand sign.
Hayden Field
Tell me about this one. Oh, I know that one. You're making the sign for I love.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah, see, this is just. I. I don't entirely understand what the end goal is here. Like this, this is. They didn't mention this on stage and I feel like this is where this starts to get pretty creepy.
Hayden Field
Yeah, and the fact that, like, it takes so long to even respond, you know, I mean, yeah, there it's one. It's not working that well. I mean, it's. It's like impressive for what it is, I guess. But I mean, it's kind of creepy just thinking about what people are like. People already have a lot of really, you know, emotional connections to models, and I feel like this is Gonna further that.
Jay Castronakis
You know, fortunately, you're gonna need $25,000 and maybe you need to break into their prototype labs in order to get this experience. But yeah, I point like this is, this is on their mind. Once you create this technology, it will get there. But I do think just to bring it back to the world models. It sounds like this is maybe the, the next big. We're seeing a very small sliver of this right now, but from what you're hearing in the world, right, the world models are the next phase.
Hayden Field
Yeah, the, some of the, like biggest AI pioneers launched world labs. When was, I think 2024. No, 2025, like in November last year. And they left where they were, which was a ton of top AI labs to start and go all in on just world models. And the company's called World Labs. And it was kind of like you were describing, like right now it's basically like using arrows to more like navigate around an AI generated world. But, you know, all the, like investors I've been talking to, all the AI leaders I've been talking to in the past year have been all in on World Lab saying this is to make models smarter with spatial awareness and then eventually robotics, which is what most AI companies that have models eventually want to do in some way, shape or form.
Jay Castronakis
It is going to be really interesting. Right now it is just videos from Google, but I will say, like one of the, you know, I think a very fun thing for Google is they're, they're saying all this stuff is, is supposed to be available right away, so we will find out very quickly exactly what it is capable of. So I look forward to being able to test this stuff out. All right, we got to throw it to a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to be talking about search and a lot of the fun stuff they announced that you're able to just immediately try out and use.
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Jay Castronakis
All right, we're back. It's time to talk. Search time, talk vibe coding.
Hayden Field
Lots going on.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah, there's a lot. So it's very interesting. Google search is sort of a big thing for them and. And search ended up getting, like, smushed in the middle of this presentation because, as Sooner told us, apparently they're. They decided 10 years ago that they're an AI first company. I. Yep, I missed that announcement. I don't know. Feels like more of a slightly more recent thing than that.
Hayden Field
He made a big deal of it. He was like, it was 10 years ago that we pivoted our entire company to be AI first and we were the first to do it or something. And I was like, okay, yeah, but you're still a search company too, though.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah, yeah. And so all of the stuff that they are building, though, does end up in search. And they kind of came out today to try to make a very big splash with search, saying, you know, we're. We're kind of completely overhauling it, and that includes just like infusing AI into every corner of search. And it's very interesting because I feel like a lot of what they're announcing maybe already exists today. Very recently, I have been doing searches, I would say, particularly on my phone, and I get. I start reading stuff and I'm like, there. There are no links here. Like, I am just reading an AI
Hayden Field
result now, and it keeps forcing me to have a conversation.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah.
Hayden Field
You know, like, and I'm like, I have to exit out. I'm like, no, I'm like, trying to scroll. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot. They said it was also the biggest overhaul to their search bar, like, search box in 25 years. And it was a little like, they basically said they were going to make it bigger and allow for longer queries and then automatically take you into AI mode, which is kind of what I feel like is already happening when we use it. But I guess it's going to be for everyone instead of just some.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah, it's unclear how much. They're just sort of saying like, no, this is official now. We want you to think of us as being in this different format. And I think that is probably part of what's happening here. It's really interesting. Google for, for many years now has been going out there saying, like, you know, in, you know, certain younger users and people in, you know, certain countries, they actually, like, they don't use properly formatted search queries. They don't just say, like, Indian food. They say, all right, I want a place that's open during these hours, that's great for my parents and that serves, you know, Indian cuisine and that's near. And it's like, I'm like, who does that? Who on earth makes a search query like that? Like, that's, that's nuts. And I will acknowledge, like, the more that they have infused AI into stuff and the more that I have gotten comfortable using ChatGPT and Gemini and all these other things, the more that, like, I feel like I'm losing the ability to make a, like, succinct search query. And I'm like, I'm going to search for something crazy and specific because it will more often than not get me a slightly better result. And so this is what they're saying. They're like, now the search bar, you can somehow, you can add Chrome tabs to it. You can throw in files and photos and, yeah, put it in a giant sentence.
Hayden Field
And, and you can, you can like also get back. This was what I thought was really different. You can get back like custom widgets and visualizations of your search. So, like, if you're searching for how a black hole works, obviously reading about it, it's a little hard to parse, but it can make you a custom visualization or a custom widget or like, you know, so that's really interesting. Like, it will automatically decide when, I think when you need something like that and then deliver it to you and it'll be custom made for your specific query. It won't be like, every time anyone searches for a black hole, that's what's going to happen.
Jay Castronakis
This is like both fascinating and terrifying to me. Yeah, like on one hand, I sort of admire the fact that Google, right, like, they have the, I don't know, one of the most lucrative products in existence with Google Search. It is an interface used by a zillion people on the planet. And I think, you know, famously, when you have a product that is that widely used, you have to be really, really cautious in making changes to it because there is backlash. And I think Google has actually in the past couple years been really aggressive at making changes to imbue search into or imbue AI into search. And you know, it is creating these richer experiences where they're, they're saying, okay, you search for how does a black hole work? You know, what Google thinks is a better experience than giving you 10 links about it is we'll just generate an interactive for you that just shows you it.
Hayden Field
And they're also going to let you vibe code like mini apps within search. So, like, if you want to create a fitness tracker or something with like your calendar connected, you can do that directly within search and then come back to it. So it's not a one time thing. So they want you to. For things that you search all the time, like habitual searches, they want you to have kind of like a landing page that stays the same but with updates for those. Which I think is interesting because I do search for the same things all the time and it's like, you know, that would be, it's just interesting how they're thinking about this because yeah, it's totally different. And I also am worried that some, some of these things sound really cool but some of them sound a little much. And I'm wondering if it's going to turn out to be like a Windows 11 situation when Microsoft like forced copilot to every single area of the operating system and people really, you know, did not like that.
Jay Castronakis
It's funny, I was also just thinking about how open AI was like no more side quests. And then Google comes out and they're like we're putting AI in docs, we're putting black hole widgets in search. Like every single thing has some weird new way to Gemini.
Hayden Field
It's because Google has the money to do some side quests, dude.
Jay Castronakis
They really do. And they have the data and they have you everywhere. Yeah, it's a lot. And I think it's particularly interesting watching what they're doing in search because search like at the end of the day that is the most used product and they are trying to make sure you keep using it and use more of it. And these, these changes are very, very impressive. Like you think about the black hole one, it's like, you know what that interactive like assuming it's accurate, which it has to be accurate every single time somebody makes that search because they're generating it again and again and again and again and again. Which honestly sounds a little bit inefficient that that probably means that all of the links you would click to read about how black holes work aren't getting clicked. And so you know, Nilay and David talked about this at length, right. This is how the web dies. If Google, if, if Google is the end, right? If you just search on Google and that's it and it can do everything for you, that's the end. And increasingly they're building so much capability and into Google. Like look, I'm not going to say it's not impressive. It's, it's, it's very impressive that they can instantaneously build a little widget for you. It's also a little scary I constantly
Hayden Field
am thinking about like how things could go wrong as an AI reporter, obviously. And I'm just thinking about like when we had, when AI overviews were released. Obviously it was giving like a lot of dangerous advice. Some of it was like kind of funny dangerous like putting glue on pizza. And some of it was not at all funny at like, you know, telling you what you should do when you're pregnant and it's wrong, like things like that, like people could really believe. And I'm just wondering, like, when is it gonna give like a diagram for how to make a bomb? You know? Like, I just really feel like there's so many, like, we'll see what they do here. And like, I always red team this type of thing myself to see like the messed up things they can do and see where the safety processes lack. But I'm definitely gonna be doing that for this because I feel like there's so many things that it could just be like, I don't know, I can imagine like kids using it and then it like gives you a diagram of something inappropriate or like a widget to explain something else. And it's like, you know, I, I don't know. We're gonna have to red team this for sure because it'll be interesting to see like where their safety guardrails fall short. And the other thing I thought was really interesting was AI overviews. They were really, they were really like locked in on trying to save their reputation from and get away from the embarrassment there. They were like, everyone uses AI overviews. They were saying that it was like.
Jay Castronakis
But it's, it's so funny. They're like, look, how many. Was it like a billion people now?
Hayden Field
2.5 billion monthly users.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah. Okay. You know why, like if you put literally anything on google.com it instantly gets that many people. Like, that's, you can't. Impressive.
Hayden Field
Yeah, you can't opt out. So it's like, I mean I use it, but do I want to? Like, right.
Jay Castronakis
Sometimes I click into AI overviews by accident. I'm like, I thought that was the button for the links.
Hayden Field
And also it's like there no matter what. Honestly, like, it's like even if you don't click into it, it's there. So I don't know. And I just thought it was funny how they were really like locking into that. They were like, it's been a revelation. They said our biggest upgrade to search ever.
Jay Castronakis
And that is a revelation for google.com because they keep more people which like very good for the business not so good for literally every other business that you know wants you to click the link. Yeah, I mean this is what, what people in the chat are talking about this too. Simply said, me says I feel that this is very complicated for the current web. It's like, yep, that, that's it. That's the end.
Hayden Field
Sums it up.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah. They're taking the current web and they are remaking it on, you know, on google.com. okay. So a bunch of other things that they announced that are a little more consumer facing one. Another Vibe coding thing that I'm excited to try out is in Google AI Studio, which is one of 500 products they have that allows you to use AI. They're adding the ability to prompt and create. They're adding the ability to Vibe code Android apps. You'll be able to test them out in your browser, send them to your phone. I think eventually you'll be able to have friends and family test them out with you and I think at some point down the road they can make it onto the Play Store. This is cool. Have we, we were on this show like what last summer talking about our Vibe coded projects. Yeah. Have you, have you experimented more recently?
Hayden Field
Yeah, I feel like it's been fun. They've definitely gotten better and like it depends. It's been fun to see how like different tools stack up. You know, I will say like I have fun Vibe coding stuff and it's like a really fun project but I like usually don't use it again after because sometimes it'll break or like it's not that useful like, you know, so I think it's fun to do but I still haven't found anything that like I'm using constantly on my own, you know, besides like just a one off thing or I come back to it a couple times.
Jay Castronakis
No, this has been my problem too. I, I think I have absolutely abandoned more totally complete and functional Vibe coated projects than I have continued to use. And there are some that I've continued to use. I mean I made it, this is using Claude made a notes app that I really love. I'm you know, tinkering with an email app that I've started using. Super, it's, it's super impressive but it's like just because you can make stuff doesn't mean that it is good and worth using. I have not tried making anything for mobile yet and so, and I, I, I'm an Android user so I'm excited to be able to tinker with this, see if it works. I have, but I Also have no idea what I'm gonna make.
Hayden Field
Right.
Jay Castronakis
Like, there's.
Hayden Field
Yeah.
Jay Castronakis
The ability to make it doesn't mean that I need to make.
Hayden Field
I feel like I have to just, like, you know, like, as I go about my day, like, just jot down, like, my pain points and, like, then go from there. Because when I sit down to think about what I should make, it never comes up. But, like, during the day, when I'm really annoyed with something, that's when I think of it. Like, I remember David Vibe coded, like, a really cool tracker for his baby when he had his new baby. And then, like, I don't know. I. Like, one of my. Someone I interviewed Vibe coded a Goodreads alternative for his wife because she was really annoyed that, like, there was no way to say you only read some of a book, I think, without seeming like you were kind of a failure, like, you couldn't. Like, I, like, I. I don't remember what it was because I don't use Goodreads, but it was basically like, if you stop a book, it's kind of like, oh, it's always on your shelf forever. But, like, what if you just don't like the book and you don't want to keep going? And so he, like, created a way to make it, like, less embarrassing or whatever if you didn't finish.
Jay Castronakis
I like that. Yeah. You can feel good about throwing it down because you listen, you're decisive about not liking it. That is the thing, though, right? It's like, it's very, very specific in this stuff that, like, I don't know, in the moment, it sounds good. Will it actually sound good later? So I think this is, like, a nice thing for them to offer. But again, Google's five coding tools have not been the best so far, so I think it'll be really interesting. What is possible. This also plays into. They announced last week during the Android show that they're bringing Vibe Coded widgets, or they're not even calling it Vibe Coded. It's like, prompted AI generated widgets as just, like a general consumer feature to a bunch of phones in Android 17. And I think the question for all these is, like, okay, what can it actually access on your phones? What can it actually do? Because they keep being like, you can have a widget that will generate recipes for you. And I'm like, why do I want that?
Hayden Field
And will they be good? You know?
Jay Castronakis
Yeah, it's like, I don't want. I don't want just, like, a bunch of recipes on my home screen.
Hayden Field
Yeah. Pay For New York Times cooking, like, right, this is.
Jay Castronakis
I. I've got a hookup for that. So that's one of the big things. They also announced a new app called Pix, which is AI prompted image editing. Unless you prompt to edit specific portions of an image. The demos that we saw were okay.
Hayden Field
And when the demo is okay, I'm a little skeptical, you know.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah. And the other thing they talked a little bit about, and this is actually a very big deal, is I think they're expanding their watermarking tool, Synth ID into more places. They're expanding the ability to check on C2PA credentials. So they're doing more to help people find out when images and video are AI generated or AI edited. A funny thing that Jess Weatherbed on our team pointed out to me is Google's approach to this is want to find out if AI was used to create that. Use our AI to find out. Like you. It seems like you have to use like an AI system in Search or Gemini in order to get that. And can you trust it? We'll find out.
Hayden Field
Yeah. And the fact that like you do have to like, there's some friction there, you know, so we'll see. At least they got like Nvidia and OpenAI I think, to sign on so, you know, hopefully it spreads. But I don't know, there's always ways to get around these things is the hard part. So I mean, anything's better than nothing.
Jay Castronakis
But I want to mention really quickly before we get a break, they also did showed a teaser of the Android XR glasses that are coming later this year. Their Warby Parker collab and their Gentle Monsters Collab. Gentle Monster collab. Just some like, you know, some regular looking glass sunglasses with some cameras and speakers in them. They did a demo on stage that showed Gemini, you know, interact from the glasses, interacting with allegedly things on the phone, things on a computer too. I think it was like very impressive. They even like kind of celebrated that the demo actually worked.
Hayden Field
And I will say these are the least ugly camera glasses I've seen. Like, I've seen some. Some pretty ugly ones. And these are, these are more chic, I will say. So good collab.
Jay Castronakis
It is interesting. Like at the end of the day, these, it's not clear that this is doing that much different from the Ray Ban meta glasses, but if you take the Ray Ban meta glasses and give them access to all of the personal data that Google has access to on you, they will in fact be more capable. So Google is going to have an advantage there and we're going to find out more about that later this year. They did not have a lot of concrete details to share. All right, we got to take a break. When we get back, we're going to talk a little bit about Google's, I think, grandiose wrap up to the event and Hayden's been covering the Musk v. Altman trial and we're going to hear a little bit about that as well.
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Jay Castronakis
All right, we're back. I just want to say for those of you in the comments, I, I steer you, I hear you shouting out the thunder round and I, I appreciate it. The fight continues. One day we will, we will bring it back. All right, so to wrap up, I want to talk about how Google concluded the keynote, which really interesting. I didn't go back to check this, but every time I can remember they bring Sundar back out to bookend the event and he says some nice words and waves everybody away. This time they brought out Demis Hassabis, who leads Google DeepMind, and he closed out the event with some really grandiose thoughts about AI. And I'm just going to throw to the clip here because I want everyone to hear what he had to say. Google's cutting edge research and products will help unlock AGI's incredible potential for the benefit of the entire world. When we look back at this time, I think we will realize that we were standing in the foothills of the Singularity. It will be a profound moment for humanity. This technology will be a false multiplier
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for human ingenuity and usher in a
Jay Castronakis
new golden age of scientific discovery and progress, improving the lives of everyone everywhere. I mean, this is, he's like, we're going to reach the Singularity. AGI is coming. And I will say, compared to the other people who run major AI labs, I trust Demis slightly more. The man won a Nobel Prize. And I do think that it's very interesting listening to him, I get the impression that this is a guy who is like, all right, all right, I'll make Gmail talk to you, but you gotta give me some money so I can make some, some science happen.
Hayden Field
And the fact that Musk and Altman both were really really fearful of him isn't a bad sign.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah, but I am curious, like, you know, you are talking to all of the people in the AI world. I think Demis's predictions are quite, quite bold. I'm curious how many of them are thinking about the science, health, medicine stuff right now. Because it's funny, we've just, everyone keeps talking about AGI, AGI, AGI, but they're so single mindedly focused, it feels like on how can we like sell you stuff?
Hayden Field
Yeah, it's because, you know, to get to there, to get to there you have to sell a lot of stuff. So I mean it makes sense. But especially with Google was saying it's like it's Capex, its investment in AI has changed from like 31 billion to in 2022 to like 190 billion now. So they do need money. But yeah, I've, I've been, it's been interesting thinking about, I don't know, I think that sometimes it depends on the company and it depends on like the year. But there have been a lot of times that AI labs kind of lean on health science stuff as kind of like a piece of good PR when they're, when they're facing some bad stuff. Like, you know, they're like, oh, but we're also working on curing cancer, you know, and sometimes they are. We haven't seen a lot of movement there, but I mean we have seen DeepMind in particular has done a lot more science, has a lot, has had a lot more success in science than any other AI lab I've seen, which is kind of nice to see, but I don't know, the foothills of the singularity, it's a little much. And I will say, I don't know, I think I've seen a trend lately with AI labs of like just really harping on the fact, like he said, improving the lives of everyone everywhere. And they've all been really harping on the fact that like, oh, we're, they're almost like going, they're just like beating us over the head with like, it's not gonna harm you, it's not gonna hurt you. We're, it's actually gonna make your life better in every single possible way. And I've been seeing, you know, it's just interesting to see like this kind of new marketing blitz of personal superintelligence like AI that you're in control of when in fact like Pew Research studies from last summer say that like adults feel that like I think 60% of adults don't feel in control of how AI is used in their life at all.
Jay Castronakis
I mean, how, how could they. Right, right, like it. Unless you are like an open claw, bro. Like that. Like then you're everyone else. I mean actually then you've given up all control but you're like so on board.
Hayden Field
Yeah. Actually that's why Open Cloud was so popular that like at clock on when I went, everyone was like, yeah, this makes us feel like we have more control than giving all our data to the lab. So it's just interesting.
Jay Castronakis
Yeah, yeah, it's on your Mac Mini baby. I do think it's so interesting that they shows ended with Demis and on this note, which, and I think to your point, maybe that is the idea, maybe they're, they're trying to, you know, put some friendlier vibes out there. Demis mentioned shortly before this they're doing some sort of Gemini for science thing where they'll allow agents to do different, I don't know, research tasks. I don't know because they gave him 30 seconds to discuss it out of this two minute keynote.
Hayden Field
Probably didn't fit into the user friendly language they were going for.
Jay Castronakis
I know. And it's like genuinely, I am so much more interested in the stuff that DeepMind is doing around allegedly right around health and medicine and science. It would be great to hear more about that and not just hear that the Singularity is apparently coming soon.
Hayden Field
Without the lack of details on that.
Jay Castronakis
The Singularity is a conversation with your Gmail account. Congratulations, we've made it. It's not what it was all cracked up to be. Okay, Hayden, let's talk about the other big AI story of the week, which is a little trial that you've been covering for actually three weeks.
Hayden Field
Right.
Jay Castronakis
So, yeah. Do you want to, do you want to talk about what, what came down this week?
Hayden Field
Yeah, I mean it was this week. We just basically got the jury deliberation verdict like right away. But it's been interesting because for the past week it was just non stop kind of fodder for everyone getting more evidence for the fact that like a lot of the people in charge of AI just aren't trustworthy and don't love to see that, you know, I mean, it's like piece of evidence after piece of evidence just showing that they are like temperamentally incapable of being honest with each other. And maybe that's changed in recent years, but you know, it's happened for years and years and that's what we saw through all these texts. Like and the other thing I saw that was a little bit disconcerting is just the vying for control. Constant vying for control, despite the language that they're all parroting, which is, we don't want anyone to be in control. We don't want an AGI dictatorship, We don't want any one person to be making all the decisions. Yet a lot of times in the background, they were all vying for control. And sometimes that was, oh, well, it's better that I be in control than someone else. But as we all know from, like, every movie, that's not really the best approach either. So, yeah, I don't know. Even Saya Nadella was, like, talking to some of his colleagues, saying, well, if we're putting this much money in, we need to have control of destiny. And so, you know, I mean, it's just those were the two big takeaways I saw. It was like, the constant untrustworthiness for years and years and years and kind of like playing both sides and, you know, telling people what they want to hear and then doing something different in the background. Not just Altman, but, like, a lot of executives at both. At all, a lot of companies.
Jay Castronakis
I mean, we saw what Mira Moradi was playing both sides as Altman was ousted.
Hayden Field
Yeah. And then, you know, Brockman, like, with. With Musk, like, there was a lot going on there. And then, yeah, just the vying for control of literally everyone involved. It was just really interesting. Even Brockman and Sutskever at one point told Altman, oh, like, why do you care about being CEO so much? Does it have something to do with your political goals? Because you wanted to run for governor? So, yeah, there's just a lot of power. Like, as the reason I'm an AI reporter is honestly to cover the power dynamics in this space because they're so crazy.
Jay Castronakis
And.
Hayden Field
And this trial really just, like, highlighted the weird power dynamics that have always been at play, but we've never seen them, so clearly it is.
Jay Castronakis
It's entirely unclear to me if Elon thought he was going to win this trial. It does feel likely to me that he wanted all of this nonsense to come out, that he wanted people to see just how much of a train wreck OpenAI's leadership is.
Hayden Field
One of the things that he did say was his, like, you know, what he was hoping to get from the suit was for Altman and. Or Brockman to either or both step down. So obviously, you know, it doesn't look like that's going to happen, but he did really want to. You know, this is a Petty thing for him. And he wants to, you know, like he, it's both petty and not. Like he, you know, really cares about this, he says, but also he really wants to shine a light on some of the shady stuff that's been going on. So, you know, everyone involved in this whole situation was shady. And that's what's interesting. It's like Musk trying to do this to them, has also done it to himself. It's just there's mud slinging everywhere, basically.
Jay Castronakis
So you, you were tuned in for all this. Why do you think it was so easy for the jury to. The jury delivered for two hours, right?
Hayden Field
Yeah, I mean, it was just too long. Like he had waited too long to bring the suit. That's what's sad about this. It's like if someone else had brought the suit or if it had happened sooner, maybe we would have seen a different outcome. But it's just, it was just sad to make everyone, you know, sit through this for three weeks only to discover, you know, there, there's no real decision here. But, you know, Musk said he's going to appeal. We'll see. To be honest, there was, I don't think that he had a big chance of actually winning because there was never like he, he donated this money through donor advised funds. There was a middleman there. He never had a signed agreement saying, oh, this is what the money is going to go to. You know, I don't think it really held up in court at all. I think this is more of a way to kind of, yeah, mudsling and just expose things about a company that he, you know, wants to control.
Jay Castronakis
Again, if you're interested in hearing more, I can't recommend enough. Checking out Hayden's coverage and Liz Lapato's coverage on the site. They've been covering this trial through and through for the past three weeks. And you can kind of just go through and read the dirt that came out from each executive's testimony. And it has been, I don't know, but a delight is one way to phrase it, to read through this stuff. All right, well, thank you so much for tuning in live with us. This is a fun one. That's it for the Vergecast. Remember to subscribe to the Verge for ad free episodes of our podcasts, exclusive newsletters, and so much more. We'd love to hear from you all. Email us vergecastheverge.com maybe mention the thunder round. It's due for a comeback. Or you can call the hotline 866-Verge 11 the Vergecast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media podcast network. Today's show is produced by Eric Gomez and Travis Larchuk. See you next time. Adobe Acrobat your team's home base Collaborate within a shared PDF space. You've got your docs, your plans, your specs and energy. Invite the crew to build what's next.
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Podcast: The Vergecast
Episode: We react to Google I/O 2026: The Vergecast Livestream
Date: May 19, 2026
Hosts: Jay Castronakis (executive editor, The Verge), Hayden Field (senior AI reporter, The Verge)
Episode Theme:
A thorough, lively breakdown of Google’s landmark I/O 2026 event, with a strong focus on Google’s new AI “agents,” Gemini model advancements, dramatic shifts in Search, multi-modal media tools, and broader tech/AI industry dynamics. The episode also touches on the underlying competition in the AI world and discusses the contemporary Musk v. Altman trial.
This Vergecast episode dives deep into the aftermath of Google I/O 2026. With regular hosts Nilay and David out, Jay Castronakis and Hayden Field lead a fast-paced, insightful conversation about Google’s new AI-driven vision—including agents, new models, world models, changes to Search, developer tools, and the overall AI race. They unpack the reality behind the hype, offer honest skepticism, and highlight both practical implications and existential questions facing tech right now.
The Vergecast team painted the I/O 2026 keynote as a pivotal, if often chaotic, turning point—one where Google fully embraces AI not merely as an augmenting feature but as the core paradigm. The future is exciting but uncertain: Google’s agents and world models are bold swings, but practical usefulness, ecosystem effects, and ethical questions loom. Meanwhile, industry-wide power struggles (exposed by the Musk v. Altman saga) demonstrate just how unsettled AI's future remains.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the shifting foundations of tech, the real limits and risks of AI, and the crosscurrents of hype, hope, and control in Big Tech’s next chapter.