Google VP John Maletis Interview: Introducing AI To The Chromebook

Google’s latest update to the Chromebook platform includes the introduction of Gemini AI alongside direct access to new Google AI features. I sat down with Google Vice President John Maletis, who covers ChromeOS, Engineering and UX, to explore what it means to be a Chromebook in the nascent world of generative AI.

It’s been thirteen years since the launch of the first Chromebook, and in that time, two key features have been established. The first is how Google presents its laptop platform, and the second is the perception of having to be online all the time and how this limits the hardware.

“Our goal with Chromebooks is to ensure that it’s the best laptop manifestation of these Google services.”

Maletis quickly outlines the vision before moving on to the trickier subject of offline/online Chromebooks.

“That’s a myth that we’ve been trying to dispel: ‘You can be very powerful with your Chromebook even when you’re offline.’ “We’ve done a lot of work over the years to ensure you can do things offline. Now, we are finding that people are online more often than not, and that’s where we can bring the cloud to play.”

Earlier this year, Forbes contributor Jon Martindale picked out some of the best Chromebooks available. As we move into the holiday quarter, several manufacturers are releasing new Chromebooks, all in sync with Google’s latest update to ChromeOS, which brings generative AI to the platform through Google’s Gemini AI suite.

The rise of generative AI in the public eye over the last twelve months has been fast and perhaps a little bit scattershot. The UK Government’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation’s recent report on AI states that 95 percent of the UK public has heard of AI, and 66 percent feel able to explain it.

Google is packing its Gemini AI generative AI suite into many products, with search and smartphone being the two most visible options. With this company-wide effort, how did the Chromebook team work with others to introduce AI?

“The way it works is we talk with the Google Deepmind team—that’s where a lot of work like the Gemini large language model development is done. We get to understand the new experiences that they’re offering with the technologies that they’re building. Then we’re able to bring those into the experiences on our products.”

That integration could easily overload consumers who are expecting “a Chromebook” and get something different from their expectations. How much AI can you add to the Chromebook experience without overpowering it?

“We’re not in the business of delivering AI for AI’s sake,” Maletis says. “We want to make sure that we’re doing it in a helpful manner, we’re after the experiences that are really going to help people.”

His team are working to keep the Chromebook AI experience focused on being a tool that can be called on when working rather than something that is started explicitly by calling up an AI app. The goal is not to show off AI but to show off how AI can help.

“One of our core tenets is ‘Can we help people get things done faster?’ It helps with things that they couldn’t previously do.

This is not something that only generative AI can do—apps and operating systems have long guided users around experiences, be they simple UI clues such as Tool Tips through to fully guided wizards to create new content. You’ll find all of these in Google services both today and yesterday. Maletis picks out Google Photos’ search tool as a similar flavor to the potential of generative AI.

“I felt like what Google Photos did way back when [with Machine Learning] with the ability to search your photo… ‘birthday cakes; or something like that. I felt that was like the first what I call User-Realised Experiences where you’re like ‘Oh wow, I can see the benefit of that.’

Yet generative AI has a long way to go before it can be accepted as straightforward and reliable. Scratch the surface of a generative AI, and you’ll find limitations. They could be as simple as having too many fingers on a hand, through to poor recommendations driving critical services such as medicine. Not only must that be practically solved in coding, it also needs to be mentally solved so consumers will have confidence.

There’s no quick solution to this but Maletis does reach back into history to point out this is not unusual

“Over time, we’re going to have to absorb and take this on. if you remember, when [I first started interacting with a search engine], I would write long queries like ‘Can you please tell me where the nearest Chinese restaurant is?’ Now that I understand how search engines work, it’s ‘Chinese food near.’ And so I think with AI, people are just going to get more accustomed and more sophisticated.”

Looking at the new Chromebook devices launched this month, there’s the small matter of the Quick Insert Button. Sitting in the space where you might expect a Search or a Launcher button, the Quick Insert button opens a pop-up menu of options to work with. Why is this not a dedicated AI button, given the focus on AI?

“We are exposing things like [the AI driven] Help Me Write in the Quick Insert Button, but it’s also an ability to enter gifs or emoji… we have AI, but we also have items like Google Drive integration and access to your files.”

The Quick Insert button has debuted on Samsung’s new Chromebook, but it’s not on every Chromebook, even if it is part of Google’s vision of the Chromebook in 2024.

“We do have a pretty strong belief in what the keyboard layout should look like, and it’s aligned with our OEMs. Going forward, you’re going to see a lot more devices with that layout, but there’s still an option for an OEM to not put on the insert key in a new device.”

Just as OEM partners are free to build on the core design through different physical parts, displays, thermal management, and industrial design, the Quick In

Google leaves many consumer decisions to its partners, such as the industrial design, performance, and specifications to its OEM partners…but it also has a firm hand on the tiller regarding the platform’s direction and how it adopts new technologies. With the disruptive impact of generative AI being felt across the industry, Google can guide how generative AI is brought to this part of the laptop space… and, with it, influence how AI is used across the entire space.

Now read more about Apple’s delayed plans to introduce generative AI to the iPhone and the Mac line-ups…