During the recent Made by Google event, we got our first official look at many of the features coming to the Pixel 9 series, from Satellite SOS to Add Me. One of the standouts, however, was Pixel Screenshots, an app that aims to “help you save, organize, and retrieve information” collected on your smartphone.
To explain how it works, let's say you're looking to update your wardrobe and you find a nice pair of sneakers online. You take a screenshot and the app analyzes the image and places it in a digital library.
From there, you can add a note for future reminders or save the screenshot you just took to a collection. These groups appear on the Screenshots app home page for easy access.
How many forgotten screenshots do you have on your phone? 😬 Pixel Screenshots will help you save, organize, and recover them by analyzing photos to make them searchable. This feature will be running on #Pixel9 devices with the help of Gemini Nano and Tensor G4. #MadeByGoogle pic.twitter.com/yXR4sRLTHmAugust 13, 2024
Robust organization
The app even features its own mini search engine to help you navigate the library. Gemini Nano has been integrated into the software, allowing Screenshots to understand “complex queries.” In the live demo, Google offers the example of a user typing “shirt price” to locate an image of a shirt with the price tag displayed.
The best thing is that the app also saves the URL within an entry, as below the main image there is a Chrome link to the source website. You no longer have to keep the tab open forever.
Looking further down, it appears that Gemini creates a short overview listing for a product. If it's a t-shirt, the accompanying text lists the name of the item, its brand, where it was printed, and, interestingly, a short description. It also appears that users can share these entries with others and set up alerts to view them later.
Analysis: Safety first
If any of this sounds familiar, it's because Pixel Screenshots works in a similar way to Microsoft's highly controversial Recall. Think about it: you're basically feeding an AI a constant stream of screenshots that show your internet history. This might sound scary at first glance, but the two have one important difference.
Google's technology doesn't work or record automatically. You have to provide screenshots to the app manually. It's a simple change that goes a long way toward ensuring user privacy. There's no need to fear a potential keylogger, which was a concern with Microsoft's technology.
Pixel Screenshots is shaping up to be the next evolution of note-taking apps. It offers an incredibly convenient way to organize chaotic internet browsing. Hopefully, this means that your image folders won't have to be a complete mess anymore, thanks to Gemini doing all the work.
There's still a lot we don't know about the software, such as what kind of security measures it has. The Tensor G4 chipset probably has data protection built in, but how long are snapshots kept? Indefinitely? Or are old photos deleted after a while?
We'd also like to know if there are any plans to roll out Pixel Screenshots to older models. At the time of writing, it's exclusive to the Pixel 9 series.
Don't forget to check out TechRadar's list of the top seven things we saw and learned at Made by Google.
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