Google has announced new generative artificial intelligence (AI) features for its Google Chrome browser. These features will be available on Chrome for Mac and Windows computers, and the company has begun adding them with the current Chrome release (M121). Currently, two new AI features have been added to the browser, with a third one planned for next month. The two features will allow users to customise Google Chrome themes and organise opened tabs. These will be launched under the Experimental AI label, and due to them being early public experiments, they are not being added to enterprise and educational accounts.
The new AI tools were revealed by Google in a post where it said that these features were aimed at improving the efficiency of the users while making the browser experience more personalised. The new features include a Tab Organiser, custom themes, and Writing help. These features are currently limited to the US but they will be expanded to other markets soon.
To enable these features, users will need to sign into their Google account, select Settings from the three-dotted menu on the top right, and navigate to the Experimental AI page. There, they will see an option to turn on AI features.
Tab Organiser
As per Google, this AI-powered feature will automatically create tab groups based on opened tabs, and organise the browser for the user. This is aimed at people who keep a large number of tabs open, and find manual tab grouping a hassle. To use this feature, users can right-click on a tab and select Organise Similar Tabs. Alternatively, users can click on the drop-down menu on the top left, and click on the Organise tabs option. It will manually suggest tabs to be grouped, and a name and emoji for it, which the user can change manually.
Custom themes
The custom themes feature is based on the same AI text-to-image diffusion model that has been previously seen on Android 14 devices starting with the Google Pixel 8 series. The feature lets users generate unique themes for the Google Chrome browser. Image generation is a prompt-less process and will not require the user to be proficient with prompt creation.
To use this feature, users can click on the Customise Chrome side panel, choose Change theme, and click on the Create with AI option. The panel has a drop-down menu to let the user choose a theme, two separate options to add stylistic details, and an option to pick from several colours to create a unique theme. Once done, clicking on Create will generate six images to choose from.
Writing help
While the abovementioned features are available to users in the US already, another feature has been planned for next month. Writing help is essentially an AI-powered text-generation tool, similar to Google Bard, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and even Google SGE (Search Generative Experience). As per Google, the AI writing assistant will help users draft reviews for an establishment, RSVP for a party, or make an inquiry on a website.
The feature will be accessible in a text box on any website in Google Chrome. Users can simply right-click and select Help Me Write. This will open up another text box. Once the user writes a few words on what they want to say, the tool will generate the text. Users will have the option to change the length and the tone of the text.