ISSUE 50 • ANDROID ADVISOR 5GOOGLE I/O 2018serious improvements to the software and services
underlying the entire Google ecosystem.
Hardware is nothing without software that tells
it what to do, after all. And at I/O 2018, Google’s
software was focused squarely on making the
Internet more about you through the power of
machine learning. Let’s dig in.
Gmail Smart Compose
Google CEO Sundar Pichai kicked things off with
Smart Compose, which is basically Gmail’s Smart
Reply cranked to 11. Whereas Smart Reply would
scan your emails and intelligently offer buttons with
quick one-click responses, Smart Compose uses AI
to suggest complete sentences as you’re drafting an
email. As you type, you’ll see suggestions appear in
faded grey text; clicking Tab uses the suggestion.
“Smart Compose helps save you time by cutting
back on repetitive writing, while reducing the chance
of spelling and grammatical errors,” Google says. “It
can even suggest relevant contextual phrases. For
example, if it’s Friday it may suggest ‘Have a great
weekend’ as a closing phrase.”
Smart Compose sounds like a serious timesaver
if it’s as effective in reality as it is in concept.
Google Photos
Machine learning is making Google Photos more
useful in the coming months, too. While you’re looking
at an image in the coming weeks, you might see new
prompts offering to fix the brightness of an image, or
fade the background to black to make the star of the