Android continues to expand beyond phones into cars, wearables, and more, now reaching over billions of screens. Google I/O 2025 introduced key updates focused on making experiences adaptive across devices and integrating advanced AI capabilities. These advancements are particularly relevant to how executives should think about future work. Here’s a look at my key highlights from this year’s event.
Key takeaways
✨ AI is the new standard. AI is no longer a unique selling point. It is now a foundational part of modern applications. The focus has shifted to how we can leverage AI to enhance productivity and create more intelligent product experiences.
💠 Adaptive is a necessity, not a feature. Building adaptive experiences that work seamlessly across Android’s diverse hardware is no longer optional. Android 16 is pushing developers to adopt an “adaptive-first” mindset.
🤖 The rise of the AI Agent – We’re moving beyond simple, reactive AI assistants. They are now proactive, autonomous AI Agents that can handle complex, multi-step problems and workflows on their own. Think Skynet; so, make sure you add a “please” to your prompts.
Positive changes
Developer productivity was front and center. And Gemini is behind it all. It’s deeply integrated into Android Studio, offering developers significant productivity boosts. This includes the ability to:
- Generate Compose previews from text
- Transform UI elements with simple descriptions
- Use AI agents to run user journey tests automatically
In general, the latest version of Android Studio just feels more sleek. The embedded Android XR emulator is easy to work with and performant. I booted up one of my sample apps and it just worked. Feels like we’re living in the future. But there is so much more.
New and improved tools
Google AI Studio was new to me. It’s essentially a playground where you can try out Google’s AI models. It now includes a Generate Media tab for working with Imagen and Veo models. I used Veo to create the below video. Ultra realistic results.
I was excited to get my hands on Firebase AI Studio. It’s an AI-powered, cloud-based IDE for building, testing, and deploying full-stack AI applications directly from a browser. A mouthful.
I simply typed, “An app that lets you write poetry with rhyming support.” And it did its thing. The structure of the generated application, embedded AI support, and elegant color scheme, left me speechless. The game has changed.
To keep the whole poetry theme going, I switched to Stitch. 🥁 It’s a new tool that lets you create complex UIs from simple text prompts. The experience was flaky, but I can see the future of where this technology is going. The Figma integration was the highlight for me. Just one click and the designs were ready for refinement. 🤯
All things AI
I have a conversation with an AI tool practically every day. Yet, after attending I/O I realized that I can do much more. “What’s your go to prompt?” That’s the question that I asked everyone. It opened my eyes to creative ways that my tech friends were using AI to be more productive.
One concrete example, I wasn’t familiar with the benefits of AI Notebooks. They let you upload multiple documents and use AI to interact with the contents. A personal knowledge base. Since then, I’ve created a few different notebooks to help me answer questions across documents (emails, docs, ppts, etc.). It’s quite powerful!
Feel like you’re not taking advantage of what’s out there? Use this table as a starting point to understand what’s available and when you use it.
| AI Option | What It Is | When You’d Use It |
|---|---|---|
| AI Assistant | Your trusty sidekick that does what you ask, reactive and good for specific tasks | Summarizing text, simple customer service chatbots, drafting social media posts (with your review) |
| AI Agent | Your independent problem-solver that tackles bigger goals, figures out steps, and uses tools proactively | Automating multi-step workflows, complex problem-solving, autonomous software development, continuous monitoring |
| Saved Prompts | Pre-written instructions you reuse to get consistent or specific outputs from an AI (like templates) | Getting consistent blog post outlines, quick access to complex queries, sharing best practices with a team |
| AI Notebook | An interactive workspace where you can upload your own documents (text, PDFs, etc.) for AI to process, summarize, and answer questions about | Summarizing long reports, extracting key information from contracts, creating a knowledge base from your own documents |
Next steps
🧪 Experiment with new tools. Try out the new capabilities in Google AI Studio. Or explore Firebase Studio to see how they can fit into your workflow.
🤖 Prepare for Android 16. Start reviewing the new orientation and resizability APIs to plan for the necessary updates to your applications.
💡 Think Like an Agent. Brainstorm how proactive AI agents can fundamentally change your user experience. They’re not just reactive assistants. They automate complex tasks and anticipate user needs.
Fin!
