Project Astra shipping ‘as early as 2025,’ Google sees ‘strong demand’ for Pixel 9

Google showed off Project Astra at I/O 2024 in May and said it was coming to Gemini Live “later this year.” CEO Sundar Pichai briefly talked about Project Astra, and the Pixel 9, during Alphabet’s Q3 2024 earnings call.

Pichai said Google is “building out experiences where AI can see and reason about the world around you.” 

Project Astra is a glimpse of that future. We’re working to ship experiences like this as early as 2025.

It’s unclear whether Gemini Live’s camera mode has slipped into 2025, or whether any availability this year will be more limited and that a wider launch is not coming until the new year. Meanwhile, a close read of that line — “experiences” — does suggest more than one product use case for Astra, with Google of course showing it off on a phone and glasses.

Live today is available for all (paid + free) Gemini users and limited to conversations involving general information. It does not yet support Gemini Extensions and accessing your Gmail or Google Calendar. Personally, I’d prefer that launch first over Astra’s camera capabilities.

Elsewhere on the AI front, Pichai also teased that teams are “actively working on performance improvements and new capabilities for our range of models.” The CEO said that there’s been “two generations of Gemini models” — which presumably means Gemini 1.0 and 1.5 — and that Google is working on the “third generation, which is progressing well.” Gemini 2.0 is rumored to be announced in December. In terms of adopting Gemini across services: 

…teams internally are now set up much better to consume the underlying model innovation and translate that into innovation within their products.

Products like Gmail, Android, Maps, Chrome, Play Store, and YouTube are said to have “done their first versions of incorporating Gemini, and there’s an aggressive roadmap ahead for 2025.”

Also of note on the earnings call was how the Pixel 9 series has seen “strong demand.” 

At Made by Google, we unveiled our latest Pixel 9 series of devices, featuring advanced AI models, including Gemini Nano. We’ve seen strong demand for these devices, and they have already received multiple awards.

The third quarter earnings call covers July to September, with the entire Pixel 9 lineup having at least a few weeks of sales.