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Google just declared itself a contender in AI design at IO 2026
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Google announced at its annual Google I/O event on Tuesday that it’s launching Pics, a new AI-powered design and image-generation app for Google Workspace. The tech giant says it designed the app to be accessible to everyone, from teachers to small business owners. With Pics, users can generate everything from social media graphics and invitations to marketing materials and mock-ups using simple text prompts, without needing any editing skills or advanced tools. By giving users an easy way to generate visuals, Google is looking to take on popular design apps like Canva, as well as products from AI-native competitors like Claude Design from Anthropic. Google’s entry into the space signals that AI-powered design is fast becoming a core competitive arena — with real stakes for any business that depends on visual content. The new app is launching to a group of testers at I/O and will be rolling out to Google AI Ultra subscribers this summer, Google says. The company acknowledges that although AI models today can generate high-quality images, it’s still difficult to modify just one part of an image. If you get an image that’s almost perfect but want to change a small detail, you have to write an entirely new prompt and hope the AI doesn’t alter too much. That’s why Pics not only generates images but also makes them easily editable. Loading the player… Users can enter a prompt, and Pics will generate what they need. Gemini powers the editing layer, making every element in a generated design or image fully adjustable. You can write a new prompt to make changes, but you can also simply click the part you want to change and leave a comment — much like leaving feedback in Google Docs. You can also edit directly, without leaving a comment or writing a prompt. For example, if you create a birthday party invitation and want to change the time listed on the card, you can do so manually. Pics is powered by Nano Banana 2, which Google says is a strong fit for the app because it supports precise text rendering, real-world knowledge, and detailed visual output. Pics is also built natively into Google Workspace, enabling visual collaboration across its apps. Once you’re happy with your design, you can download, copy, print, or share it with others. You can also pass it to someone else for a final round of edits before it goes out, Google says. Catch up on the rest of Google IO 2026’s big news Google Search as you know it is over Google updates Gemini app to take on ChatGPT and Claude Google introduces Gemini Spark, a 24/7 agent assistant with Gmail integration How to use Google’s new information agents When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University. You can contact or verify outreach from Aisha by emailing or via encrypted message at aisha_malik.01 on Signal. View Bio
Google isn’t finished infusing AI into your inbox. On Tuesday at their IO 2026 developer conference, the tech giant announced an expansion of its “AI Inbox” functionality for Gmail, which is adding conversational AI features. That means you can ask Gmail about things in your inbox instead of typing in search terms. The company says the Gemini AI-powered feature, called Gmail Live, will help you quickly find information buried in your inbox. Image Credits:Google Perhaps you need information about your upcoming flight, the time of your dentist appointment, the door code for your Airbnb rental, or some details about an event at your kid’s school, for instance. Before, you’d have to type in keywords in the search box (or maybe type in someone’s email address or domain) to try to narrow down your search. That doesn’t always make emails easy to find, however, especially if the search term is something found across several messages. “Gmail Live can answer naturally phrased questions, respond to follow-up questions, and pivot if you need to interrupt it,” Devanshi Bhandari, product lead for Gmail, explained in a briefing ahead of Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, where the feature was first introduced to the public. It’s another way that Google is trying to showcase how its AI technology can drive real-world improvements to products used by millions of consumers, at a time when many outside the tech industry are questioning the value of AI, as new data centers get built in their backyards, driving up their power bills. Being able to point to something as simple as making it easier to find something that’s lost in your email inbox — an experience nearly everyone has suffered at some point — could be a practical and positive use case for AI … or at least, Google hopes. Bhandari demonstrated Gmail Live to reporters, asking the tool a series of questions about things in the inbox, like a child’s show-and-tell project and their class trip, plus hotel and flight information for a trip to Detroit. Similar to using a stand-alone AI chatbot like Gemini or ChatGPT, Gmail users can ask these questions aloud in natural language, and the chatbot responds. In the demo, Gmail Live also understood nuances between things like “field trip” and “trip” and was able to jump from one topic to another, Bhandari pointed out. Plus, the AI can pull granular details from emails, like a hotel room number, or infer which people you’re asking about, even when they’re not explicitly named. Similar voice technology is also coming to its to-do list, Google Keep, the company noted. Notably, Gmail Live is not replacing traditional Gmail search — it’s just another option. Google may have learned that not everyone is ready for an AI-only experience after it “upgraded” Google Photos with AI-powered search to much backlash. Google Photos later rolled back the feature, making the use of AI optional after numerous complaints. Gmail is also gaining other new capabilities, including ready-to-send drafts, instant file access, and the ability to manage to-dos by marking individual tasks as done. Image Credits:Google Plus, the AI Inbox experience, which launched earlier this year, will expand beyond Google AI Ultra subscribers to reach Google AI Pro and Plus subscribers as well. This allows you to see an overview of the tasks and items to catch up on that are buried in your inbox, all on one page. The voice-powered Gmail Live feature, however, will roll out later this summer and will initially be limited to Google AI Ultra subscribers. Catch up on the rest of Google IO 2026’s big news Google Search as you know it is over Google updates Gemini app to take on ChatGPT and Claude Google introduces Gemini Spark, a 24/7 agent assistant with Gmail integration How to use Google’s new information agents When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah has worked as a
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