Shortly after its Android Show announcements on Tuesday, Google’s DeepMind, the company’s artificial intelligence lab, detailed the upcoming Magic Pointer, a feature that reimagines the mouse pointer with AI capabilities. The feature will be available in Googlebooks, Google’s new AI-focused laptops, later this year.
Google’s ambitious attempt to reinvent the computer mouse introduces several interesting features. By bringing contextual understanding and other smart tools with just a simple wiggle, it could change the way we interact with computers today. DeepMind says it wants to push the boundaries of AI tools that live in dedicated windows.
The DeepMind blog post showcased some of the ways you’ll be able to interact with Magic Pointer when it arrives. You can:
- Point at a PDF file and request a bullet-point summary to paste directly into an email.
- Hover over a table of statistics and request a pie-chart version.
- Highlight a recipe and ask to double all ingredients.
The Magic Pointer feature lets you select text and easily adjust it without having to type a highly specific prompt. The demo also shows someone hovering over two spreadsheet columns and saying, “merge these,” which instantly combines them into one.
If you want to try some of these new features out, you don’t have to wait until the Googlebooks laptops arrive later this year. The AI-enabled pointer experience is now available in Google AI Studio and lets you edit an image or find places on a map.
Google also says you can use your cursor to ask Gemini, the AI assistant built into the Chrome browser, about specific parts of a web page. For example, you could select multiple products on a page and have Gemini automatically compare them.
