Google’s annual I/O developer conference kicked off on Tuesday, May 20, with an opening keynote that was mostly AI all the way.
In a long stream of announcements, the search giant drew the curtains back on the new AI products it has been working on over the past few months, including an AI tool for filmmaking, an asynchronous AI coding agent, an AI-first 3D video communication platform, and more.
It introduced upgraded versions of existing AI models and tools such as Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro, Imagen 4, Veo 3, and Lyria 2, as well as new updates to AI Mode in Search, Deep Research, Canvas, Gmail, Google Meet, etc.
“More intelligence is available, for everyone, everywhere. And the world is responding, adopting AI faster than ever before. What all this progress means is that we’re in a new phase of the AI platform shift. Where decades of research are now becoming reality for people, businesses and communities all over the world,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement.
The Alphabet-owned company is also launching a new $249.99/month AI subscription plan called Google AI Ultra in the US, offering higher usage limits and access to its top-tier AI models and features. The new plan will be rolled out in more countries soon, it said.
Here is the complete rundown of all the announcements from the opening keynote at Google I/0 2025:
Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro
At Tuesday’s event, Google said it was bringing new capabilities to its most advanced AI models Gemini 2.5 Flash and Pro such as Deep Think, an enhanced reasoning mode where the AI model considers multiple hypotheses before responding to the user.
Story continues below this ad
Google said it will be making the Deep Think feature available to a limited number of ‘trusted testers’ via the Gemini API to get their feedback before making it widely available. It is also integrating 2.5 Flash and Pro with native audio output, advanced security safeguards, and computer use capabilities.
For developers, 2.5 Pro and Flash will now include thought summaries and thinking budgets in the Gemini API and in Vertex AI. It also announced support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) in the Gemini API for easier integration with open-source tools.
Flow, Google’s new AI filmmaking tool
Google’s new AI filmmaking tool Flow is powered by its most advanced AI models — Veo, Imagen, and Gemini. It is capable of generating cinematic clips and scenes for movies.
While the AI tool relies on the Veo and Imagen models for generating cinematic visuals, the Gemini integration is meant to make prompting more intuitive so that filmmakers can describe their vision in everyday language.
Story continues below this ad
With Flow, users can edit and extend existing shots, control camera angles, manage prompts and visual assets, and access AI-generated, production-ready clips and content. Initially known as VideoFX, Flow is now available to Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US, with more countries coming soon.
Imagen 4, Veo 3, and Lyria 2
Veo 3 is Google’s latest iteration of its text-to-video generator. It can now generate clips with audio such as traffic noises in the background of a city street scene, birds singing in a park, and dialogue between characters. The AI tool is available for Google Ultra subscribers in the US via the Gemini app and in Flow. It’s also available for enterprise users on Vertex AI.
Google has also upgraded Veo 2 with new capabilities such as camera controls, object add and remove, outpainting, and the ability to add reference images of characters, scenes, objects, etc.
Meanwhile, Imagen 4 has been upgraded to generate 2k resolution images with clarity in fine details like intricate fabrics, water droplets, and animal fur. The AI-generated images are now available to download in a range of aspect ratios. Imagen 4 is also significantly better at spelling and typography, Google claimed. It is available today in the Gemini app, Whisk, Vertex AI and across Gemini Workspace.
Story continues below this ad
Google further announced expanded access to its latest AI music generator Lyria 2, which is now available for creators through YouTube Shorts and enterprises in Vertex AI. Lyria RealTime, the underlying AI model of MusicFX DJ, is also available via an API and in AI Studio.
Jules, Google’s new AI coding agent
Jules, an AI agent powered by Gemini 2.5 Pro and capable of autonomously reading and generating code, made its debut at Google I/0 2025. Users can integrate Jules directly into their existing code repositories. The AI coding agent then makes a clone of the user’s codebase within Google Cloud virtual machine (VM) to ‘understand’ the context of the project and perform tasks such as writing tests, building new features, fixing bugs, etc.
“Jules operates asynchronously, allowing you to focus on other tasks while it works in the background. Upon completion, it presents its plan, reasoning and a diff of the changes made,” Google said. On its security features, Google said that Jules is private by default and doesn’t train on a user’s private code.
It is available in public beta for everyone, including Gemini 2.5 Pro free tier users.
Story continues below this ad
Gemini gets smarter
There were several important updates announced to Google’s Gemini AI assistant on Tuesday. For starters, anyone with an Android or iOS device will have access to Gemini Live’s camera and screen sharing capabilities. This means that users can talk live with Gemini about what they see either on their phone screen or through the phone’s camera.
Secondly, Gemini is coming to the desktop version of Google Chrome but only for Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US. This enables users to ask Gemini to clarify or summarise any information on any webpage that users are reading. “In the future, Gemini will be able to work across multiple tabs and navigate websites on your behalf,” Google said.
AI Mode in Search
At I/O 2025, Google emphasised that it is revamping its search engine with AI in order to keep up with the evolving pace of how users are looking for information online. AI Overviews is driving over 10 per cent increase in usage of Google for the types of queries that show AI Overviews, Google said, while recognising India and the US as the biggest markets for the AI-driven search functionality.
On Tuesday, Google further expanded access to AI Overviews which is now available in more than 200 countries and covers around 40 languages, with new support for Arabic, Chinese, Malay, and Urdu.
Story continues below this ad
The company also announced that it would be rolling out AI Mode in Google Search for all users in the US starting May 20. AI Mode is described as an end-to-end AI Search experience that is designed to help users go deeper into Search through follow-up questions and web links.
In order to provide this enhanced, multimodal search experience, the company said it relies on a query fan-out technique, where AI is used to break down the search query and issue a multitude of queries simultaneously on the user’s behalf.
AI Mode in Google Search will come with new features such as Deep Search (for creating a fully-cited report), Search Live (to search in real-time using the phone camera phone screen), agentic capabilities (where AI agents will autonomously buy event tickets or make restaurant reservations and local appointments on a user’s behalf), Personal Context (pulling user context from connected Google apps like Gmail), and AI-generated custom charts and graphs.
All of the new features we showed at I/O will be coming to Labs users for AI Mode in the coming weeks and months, Google said.
Story continues below this ad
Shopping in AI Mode
Google further unveiled several shopping-focused features in AI Mode. When users search for a product to buy via AI Mode, they will be shown a Shopping Graph with more than 50 billion product listings in a browsable panel of images and product listings personalised to the user. “The new righthand panel dynamically updates with relevant products and images as you go, helping you pinpoint exactly what you’re looking for and discover new brands,” Google said.
To help decide what clothes users want to buy, Google has developed a virtual try-on tool powered by a custom image generation model for fashion. It is also bringing agentic capabilities to help users track the prices of their favourite products and autonomously complete checkout of a user’s shopping cart on their behalf with Google Pay.
Beam, Google’s new video communication platform
Initially known as Project Starline when it was first teased in 2021, Google Beam is a video conferencing platform that uses a light field display and six cameras to create a 3D-rendered version of the person on the other end of a video call in real-time. The hardware is a Chrome OS-powered display that has been integrated with an AI model and Google Cloud.
Google has partnered with HP to create the hardware design for Beam, though manufacturers can also come up with their own hardware for Beam. While currently limited to one-to-one calls, Google said it is working on enabling Beam to be used in group calls as well as regular 2D calls.