Google’s upcoming Pixel 9 series — which recently leaked in significant detail — will apparently get an upgraded version of the company’s Gemini Nano model.
According to Android Authority, Google confirmed the Pixel 9 series will sport a version of Gemini Nano with multimodal capabilities. Nano is a smaller version of Gemini designed to run on smartphones and currently powers a limited number of things on the Pixel 8 series. However, the updated version reportedly can also discern context from real-world images, sounds and spoken languages.
Google also said the improved Nano will power its new TalkBack feature intended to help people with vision impairments by describing what’s happening in images. TalkBack will be able to create descriptions of unlabeled photos, and this will happen on-device without the need for a network connection.
Android Authority also reported that the upgraded Gemini Nano would need new Neural Processing Units (NPUs) and more RAM, which suggests it might not work on older Pixel models. However, Google also said that it will be available “starting with the new Pixels later this year,” and that it was working to make the model more compact, so maybe we’ll see it expand to more devices in the future.
