Google has officially announced that its annual developer conference, Google I/O 2024, will be held exactly two months from now, on May 14th.
The opening keynote, just like last year’s, will be held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, hosted by the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, will be “broadcast in front of a limited in-person audience” and will be available to live stream for anyone who wants to watch it virtually. Next, developer keynotes and on-demand technical sessions will be held.
For those attending in person, there will also be a second day of live programming on May 15. In the past, Google I/O lasted three days, but for the past two years, it has been a one-day event. Google will make the agenda and session list available closer to I/O 2024. Online registration has already started in the past few hours and is free.
“Registering for Google I/O 2024 allows you to stay up-to-date on the program and content, along with developer-relevant news, via email. As a registrant, you can also create a developer profile to get the most out of the digital experience by saving and viewing content that is relevant to you.”
As always, a “puzzle” could not be missing to solve. For Gooogle I/O 24, a Pipe Dream-style game has been chosen, in which you have to drive a marble from point A to point B. Completing the levels will reveal the date of the keynote, which we now know.
This year’s Google I/O, as expected, will focus particularly on artificial intelligence features, especially after the Mountain View company released in recent months both its Gemini model (launched last year under the name Bard) and the more recent Gemma, a family of models designed to support developers and researchers in creating custom AI solutions that can run locally and with more basic hardware. The Gemma models are available in two different sizes, 2B and 7B, so they can also run on laptops.
There should be no shortage of news related to the functionality of generating images of people in Gemini AI, recently “paused” by Google as many of those generated were too inaccurate from a historical point of view or even offensive in some cases. Google acknowledged the error and temporarily suspended this feature while waiting for an improved version.
Obviously, there will also be a lot of space for Android, probably with some anticipation of the new features that will be implemented in version 15 of which, we remember, the first Developer Preview was already released last February. This preview is allowing developers to have a first contact with this new release of the operating system that will be focused on security, performance and camera functionality. Before Google I/O, according to the roadmap, the first betas are expected to be released.
In addition to the “software” part, there should also be news related to hardware. Last year, during I/O 2023, Google announced the Pixel 7a. It is likely that during the next event the Pixel 8a will be officially presented, of which rumors have been circulating for several months now. In addition to various confirmations on the name, acronym, and design, which came via the alleged sales packaging, we also saw a “dummy” last November and detailed renders that revealed details on the size and placement of the keys.
On the hardware side, the Pixel 8a – codenamed Akita – is expected to come with a Tensor G3 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 6.1-inch OLED display and, of course, Android 14 as its native operating system. Relative to the price, the bar will probably rise a bit compared to the Pixel 7a which, remember, started at 499 euros. According to rumors, it will start at €569.90. Finally, there are four colour variants at launch: “Obsidian” (black), “Porcelain” (beige), “Bay” (light blue) and “Mint” (light green).