Google opened its I/O 2026 developer conference on May 19 with a message that artificial intelligence is no longer a feature bolted onto its products but the center of Android, Search, YouTube, Workspace and nearly every service the company runs.
Gemini Omni
The announcement that drew the most attention was Gemini Omni, a multimodal model that Google says can combine text instructions, voice, images and existing footage to generate video and other media. Screenshots of the interface had leaked in the weeks before the conference; the keynote confirmed the product and demonstrated it on stage. Google positions Omni as a step beyond its Veo video models toward a single system that understands and produces across media types.
If the technology performs in everyday use as it did in Google’s demonstrations, it would put further pressure on video production, marketing and content creation businesses that are already contending with generative video tools from OpenAI, Runway and ByteDance.
Android 17 and system-wide Gemini
The second major announcement was Android 17, in which Google showed plans to embed Gemini throughout the operating system rather than confining it to an assistant app. In Google’s presentation, the phone can draw on a user’s apps, searches, documents and habits to offer suggestions, help with decisions and carry out multistep tasks on the user’s behalf. Google said the features would arrive first on Pixel devices.
Search, YouTube and Docs
Google extended AI-driven search to YouTube, letting users find videos by asking questions in natural language instead of typing keywords. In Workspace, the company previewed a voice feature for Docs that it says allows users to talk with and edit a document conversationally. Search itself gained expanded AI Mode features and tighter integration with the Gemini app, which Google said has around 900 million monthly users.
The conference continued on May 20 with sessions on Google’s AI coding tools, Android XR smart glasses developed with partners including Samsung and Warby Parker, and updates to the open-weight Gemma model family.
Taken together, the day-one announcements underline where competition among the major AI companies is heading. The race is no longer about who has the best chatbot but about which company can build an entire digital environment around AI, and Google made clear it intends to use the reach of Android and Search to compete on those terms.
