Google’s got a mysterious new experimental AI app for Android

The new app, arriving with the package name com.google.research.air.cosmo, is described by Google as “an experimental AI assistant application for Android devices” (via 9to5Google). The company goes on to explain:

COSMO brings the power of artificial intelligence directly onto your device. From organizing your day to answering complex questions, COSMO works behind the scenes to simplify your life.

That… doesn’t really do much to differentiate it from Google’s main Gemini app — so what exactly is the point of COSMO? For now, this appears to be a testbed of sorts, though exactly for whom and what isn’t yet clear.

Looking through app settings, COSMO reveals it can function with a local Gemini Nano model, a remote “PI” server, or a hybrid mode that switches between the two as available. COSMO is built to tap into Android’s AccessibilityService API to access your screen, but in our testing this doesn’t appear to be fully working just yet.

COSMO is equipped with quite a few specific AI skills, though not all of them are enabled by default.

Interacting with COSMO’s assistant works as expected, but it’s understandably quite a bit rougher around the edges than the full Gemini app. Really, the overall impression we’re getting here is that this is an app that’s not quite ready for prime time — even the Play Store listing is poorly executed, with screenshots squished into incorrect aspect ratios:

Access appears a bit limited at the moment, and even on Pixel devices the app isn’t available to install in all regions.

None of this is very satisfying, we know, but really we’ve just got more questions than answers right now. We’ll keep digging in to find if there’s anything interesting the app is ready to reveal to us, and keep an eye out to see if Google ever gets around to announcing its new tool — and hopefully clearing up a lot of these unknowns.