Control Your Chromebook With Gestures and New AI Features

Speaker 1: Good news, everyone. New Chromebook and Chromebook plus laptops are headed our way, starting at less than $350 and they'll be loaded with new features. And yes, those include new AI tools because it's been a whole half a minute since the last AI thing showed up. Seriously though, guys, Google added some pretty fun new stuff to ChromeOS, especially if you opt for a slightly pricier Chromebook plus model in case you're unfamiliar with them. Google introduced the Chromebook plus category [00:00:30] back in October, 2023, and those laptops guarantee a higher level of features and specs with prices generally ranging from three 50 to $700. There are still regular Chromebooks too, like this asus CM 30 detachable, but with the higher level specs in a plus model like this new 14 inch HP X 360 convertible, you get a few extra chromos tools and software. And those extras now include Google AI powered features and Gemini Advanced [00:01:00] Google held an event in New York City to debut the 10 new models coming from aser, HP, and asus. Speaker 1: But more importantly, we got some demos of the new features and here are the ones we think showed the most promise starting with the new game dashboard. Yes, it's true. People do game on Chromebooks and there are even gaming Chromebooks like this, Acer Chromebook plus five 16 ge. But say you're playing a touch control game and your Chromebook doesn't have a touch screen, you'll now be able to [00:01:30] quickly map the touch controls to keyboard keys. The dashboard also makes it easy to capture screenshots and gameplay video, and you can even turn on your webcam so you can record yourself chatting in the corner. And since I'm on webcam's, Google is adding gesture and face tracking to chromos for hands-free control. This was probably the most impressive demo we saw because you can completely navigate the OS and apps, write an email, browse the web play games [00:02:00] all without the keyboard and touchpad. Speaker 1: It's not fully baked, but going by what we saw, it's working really well already. These accessibility features can be enabled now as an experimental feature with a Chromos flag, but they are expected to be integrated into chromos soon. Also, coming soon is a help me read feature that uses Gemini to basically create A-T-L-D-R summary of websites or PDFs or other documents. So for example, if you go to a Wikipedia page and just want a rundown [00:02:30] of what it says, it'll do that, but then you can also ask follow-up questions so that you can get exactly the info you're after. Eventually maybe, I don't know, like all ai, it's a work in progress. Another good example of that actually is Gemini's ability to brainstorm. At Google's demo, I tested Gemini with one of the scenarios that seems to get dragged out for every AI test like this, planning a vacation. I prompted Gemini with the basics for a family Speaker 2: Trip, Tokyo in the fall, [00:03:00] and it gave me some predictably generic results. And then when I tried to refine those results with my airport of choice, it wasn't having it and it forgot all about my original prompt just given me basic flight info. To be fair, it definitely gave me a good starting point for what I prompted it with. And isn't that what brainstorming is all about? The Gemini app will be pre-installed on new Chromebook plus laptops, and through the end of 2024, if you buy one, you'll get 12 months [00:03:30] of the Google one AI premium plan included, which gets you access to Gemini, advanced Gemini for workspace and two terabytes of cloud storage among other things, which is a pretty great deal. So those are the big new features for me, but there are several other additions, so I'm sure there are other things I'm forgetting about, but you get the picture. There are new Chromebook in Chromebook plus laptops, all with more artificial intelligence and some tools that are legit helpful. The most [00:04:00] impressive thing for me is the face and gesture tracking, but I'd love to hear what you think. So let me know in the comments and you can read more about Chromebooks and ai@cnet.com. Thanks for watching, and you'll see me when you see me.