Rod Graves

Designing personal AI for Android & Pixel

[Google @Google]

Android Halo is a new space for your agents on @Android devices.

Coming later this year, it will give you at-a-glance visibility into your agents so you can see their progress right from the top of your screen.

Halo will work with Gemini Spark and other supported agents.

#GoogleIO

[Google @Google]

Today, we’re introducing Personal Intelligence.

With your permission, Gemini can now securely connect information from Google apps like @Gmail, @GooglePhotos, Search and @YouTube history with a single tap to make Gemini uniquely helpful & personalized to *you* ✨

This feature is launching in beta today in the @GeminiApp.

See Personal Intelligence in action 🧵 ↓

[Josh Woodward @joshwoodward]

Great software feels like an extension of you. We're building @GeminiApp to be the most PERSONAL, PROACTIVE, and POWERFUL assistant.
👀Here's the strategy:

1/ PERSONAL: The best assistant gets you. It starts by knowing your past chats (launching soon), but we’ll go further: we’ll make it easy for you to bring in all of your @Google context (Gmail, Photos, Calendar, Search, YouTube, etc.) - with your permission! On the team, we call it “pcontext” (personalized context) and we’re testing it internally with our own info already.

2/ PROACTIVE: The best assistant anticipates. @GeminiApp will offer insights and actions before you ask, freeing your mind and time for what truly matters. Less prompting, more flow.

3/ POWERFUL: The best assistant turns your ideas into action. @GoogleDeepMind models (like 2.5 Pro) are exceptional - they can research, orchestrate, and create images, videos, and code. We’re in a new era of models, and a new era of user experiences are coming.

4/ Zooming out, @Google infrastructure & TPUs back all of this. It’s the kind of infra people dream about, but it actually exists here -- and it’s going to let us make all this FREE for everyone to try, especially students.

5/ One request: keep your feedback coming! We try to listen, build, and iterate fast. In the last ~3.5 weeks, we’ve shipped:
* Gemini 2.5 Flash
* Veo 2 for video generation
* Free Gemini plans for all U.S. students (more countries soon!)
* LaTeX support (top request)
* Upload and edit your images (started rolling out yesterday)

6/ @demishassabis and I will unpack all of this (and more) at Google I/O in <20 days! Let’s roll!

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@dabit3 joy of missing out https://t.co/0JCv5P3Bfo

[David Singleton @dps]

My Android and Stripe worlds collide!
This week, we introduced Tap to Pay on Android—turning millions of Android devices into card readers. Users like @getsquire have integrated in just a couple of weeks.
How we built it with @Android ⤵️

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

Fortunate enough to have open roles to fill on the core system UI team for Pixel and Android: one IC leadership role and two senior design roles. I'd especially love to help find new positions for designers recently laid off. DMs open; retweets welcome.

[Android Developers @AndroidDev]

🚨 New #ADBPodcast!

Check out ep. 187, System UI: A Retrospective, to learn how System UI evolved and how to make complicated systems easy to understand → https://t.co/cMWz5lSTNJ

Featuring hosts @tornorbye and @chethaase, and @dsandler and Adam Cohen from the SystemUI team.

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@dustin Recommend Oberwerth - expensive but the materials, production, and details are top notch: https://t.co/zIkE8qHhmQ

[Dave Burke @davey_burke]

Back to the future! Navigating back is a quintessential part of the Android experience. We're adding novel framework/APIs so users can preview the destination of the back gesture. App developers can begin working towards this starting in Android 13. https://t.co/9soGtJgAHJ

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@balajis rgraves.eth

[Dave Burke @davey_burke]

Tragically, millions of people in Ukraine now rely on air strike alerts to try get to safety. Working with the Ukrainian government, we're rolling out a rapid Air Raid Alerts system for all Android phones in Ukraine. https://t.co/tCzs0eI9iW 1/3

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@gmurphy NFT incoming? 🫣
You might like this: https://t.co/06M2CqyjJL

[Max Weinbach @mweinbach]

This is the one thing that most phones just don't have. From specs to features, the iPhone 13 Pro Max or S21 Ultra may be better, but I never feel attached to the phones.

There's something about Pixel UI and the haptics and features that make it charming and fun and personal.

[Myoung Cha @myoungcha]

1/ With the omicron surge, I have had more friends send me screenshots of exposure notifications (EN) in the last week than I have in the last year. Here are some reflections based on the work I led at @Apple working with @Google and some thoughts on the road ahead. 🧵

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@karrisaarinen https://t.co/2VYGIXt9om - modular and well constructed if you're looking for something modern.

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@dflieb @patrickc @Google @TrautmanErika cc @jenniferdaniel

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@iamharaldur Can't help but feel a Kubrick vibe, ceiling vs floor notwithstanding :D

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@jonwiley @seefeld @komorama Not surprised to see you picked up on exactly this connection Jon ☺️

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@gordonbrander @gordonbrander I think you’d also enjoy Hesse’s “Das Glasperlenspiel“ / “The Glass Bead Game” - nice allegorical/fictional companion to Carse:

[Rod Graves @rgraves]

@gordonbrander I've wondered about GPT-3 et al as creative aids: an amanuensis that introduces a bit of memetic drift to aid lateral thinking - love to chat if that resonates (roam plugin perhaps?)