- Google TV’s home screen gets a “personal feed of snackable videos”
- New generative AI features on TCL Gemini-ready TVs arrive today
- Improvements to Google Photos and screensavers
Google TV is getting an upgrade (such as it is) that many people don’t like. This summer, it will bring vertical video to American viewers’ home screens in the form of YouTube Shorts clips.
According to FlatpanelsHD, it could get worse: Google hasn’t ruled out adding vertical video from TikTok and Instagram as well.
Google isn’t the first major tech company to add vertical video to its TV display. Disney+ did it earlier this year, and Instagram also has a TV app — but they’re within apps, not just sent directly to you when you turn on the TV.
Why is Google adding vertical video to Google TV?
Adding Google Shorts to your home screen is part of Google’s broader mission to keep you inside its ecosystem and seeing its ads. Currently, the recommendations on the home screen are for movies and series, which often send you other services; by adding YouTube Shorts to the mix, you might end up watching a bunch of videos from Google’s own services, each with ads.
Vertical video isn’t the only addition coming to Google TV. Starting today, if you’re a US owner of a TCL TV with Gemini (such as the TCL QM8K), you can access more generative AI tools in the form of the Nano Banana and Veo apps for generating images and video, respectively. They will roll out to more Gemini-enabled TVs and devices in the coming months.
There’s a new Remix feature in Google Photos that lets you change the styles and backgrounds of existing photos via voice commands, and you’ll be able to search for specific photos via voice. There’s also a dynamic slideshow feature that displays a selected Google Photos album as a screen saver. It does not require Gemini.
Whether you like or dislike these features is going to depend on what you use your TV for. As Google describes it, the new features are “designed to help you connect, create and share laughs together” by “unlocking the potential of TV as a shared creative canvas.”
The new generative AI tools will be available on compatible US TCL TVs today, and most of the new features will roll out to US users this summer. Dynamic slideshows will be available worldwide, again this summer.
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