Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News

At a splashy media event this week at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, Google announced four new Pixel phones. But the really important stuff unveiled at the Made By Google event wasn’t the hardware itself, but rather all of the generative AI tools packed into the devices. Most notable are some AI-powered camera features that allow Pixel owners to easily add themselves to a group shot after they’ve taken the photo, or to alter any scene entirely by changing night to day and adding objects that were never really there. It’s an exploration of our limits—how convincingly technology can bring alternate realities to life, and how much of the computer-generated scenery we can tolerate.This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior reviews editor Julian Chokkattu joins the show to talk about Google’s fancy new photo tricks. We also talk about Gemini Live, the latest iteration of the company’s AI-powered voice chatbot. Finally, we ask the unaskable: Is Google Assistant finally dead, or just banished to Google’s