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Project Astra, Google's vision for a universal AI assistant, is pulling into focus

Google is laying out its vision for Project Astra to one day power a version of Gemini that can act as a "universal AI assistant."

Last year at Google I/O, one of the most interesting demos was Project Astra, an early version of a multimodal AI that could recognize your surroundings in real-time and answer questions about them conversationally. In its latest video showcasing Astra, Google shows the assistant browsing the web and pulling out specific pieces of information necessary to complete a task (in this example, fixing a mountain bike). "Our ultimate vision is to transform the Gemini app into a universal AI assistant that will perform everyday tasks for us, take care of our mundane admin, surface delightful new recommendations, making us more productive and enriching our lives," Hassabis writes in a blog post.

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