Google has announced that its ambitious Project Astra, aimed at developing AI applications and “agents” for real-time, multimodal understanding, will not be available until at least 2025.
This timeline was revealed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai during the company’s Q3 earnings call on Tuesday. Pichai stated, “We are building experiences where AI can see and reason about the world around you. Project Astra offers a glimpse of that future, and we are striving to deliver such experiences as soon as 2025.”
Project Astra, which Google showcased at its I/O developer conference in May 2024, encompasses a diverse array of technologies. These range from smartphone apps that can recognize their surroundings and answer pertinent questions to AI assistants capable of performing tasks on a user’s behalf.
During the I/O conference, Google demonstrated a Project Astra prototype that could answer questions about objects within a smartphone camera’s view, such as identifying a user’s neighborhood or naming a part on a broken bicycle.
Earlier this month, The Information reported that Google was planning to launch a consumer-focused agent experience as early as December, capable of tasks like purchasing products, booking flights, and other chores. However, it now appears unlikely that this will happen unless the experience in question is unrelated to Project Astra.
Meanwhile, Anthropic has recently emerged as one of the first companies with a large generative AI model capable of controlling apps and web browsers on a PC. However, this underscores the challenges involved in building AI agents, as Anthropic has struggled with many basic tasks.
