Google hasn't been talking about Chromebooks as much since AI became its all-consuming focus, but that's changing today with a bounty of new AI features for Google-powered laptops. Newer, more powerful Chromebooks will soon have image generation, text summarization, and more built into the OS. There's also a new Lenovo Chromebook with a few exclusive AI goodies that only work thanks to its overpowered hardware.
If you have a Chromebook Plus device, which requires a modern CPU and at least 8GB of RAM, your machine will soon get a collection of features you may recognize from other Google products. For example, Lens is expanding on Chrome OS, allowing you to long-press the launcher icon to select any area of the screen to perform a visual search. Lens also includes text capture and integration with Google Calendar and Docs.
Gemini models are also playing a role here, according to Google. The Quick Insert key, which debuted last year, is gaining a new visual element. It could already insert photos or emoji with ease, but it can now also help you generate a new image on demand with AI.
Even though Google's AI features are running in the cloud, the AI additions are limited to this more powerful class of Google-powered laptops. The Help Me Read feature leverages Gemini to summarize long documents and webpages, and it can now distill that data into a more basic form. The new Summarize option can turn dense, technical text into something more readable in a few clicks.
Google has also rolled out a new AI trial for Chromebook Plus devices. If you buy one of these premium Chromebooks, you'll get a 12-month free trial of the Google AI Pro plan, which gives you 2TB of cloud storage, expanded access to Google's Gemini Pro model, and NotebookLM Pro. NotebookLM is also getting a place in the Chrome OS shelf.
The dawn of on-device Chromebook AI
Along with the new features for all Chromebook Plus devices, Google and Lenovo have teamed up to add some extra AI enhancements to the new Chromebook Plus 14. This machine runs on the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra processor, which Google calls the "strongest ever ARM chip in a Chromebook." The Kompanio Ultra has an NPU capable of 50 TOPS of AI throughput, which is enough to run useful AI models on the machine itself. It's a bit like a Windows-based Copilot+ laptop in that sense.
Most of the AI models we encounter in consumer technology are running on giant servers in a data center somewhere. You may not want to send all your data to someone else's server, which is why companies are also working on more focused on-device AI. For example, Microsoft made Recall slightly less alarming by running all the image analysis on local machines, and Google uses Gemini Nano on Pixel phones to parse sensitive data like voice recordings and text messages.
For the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, Google has implemented two local AI features. Smart Grouping will organize open tabs and documents into "logical groups" with the help of AI. The Chrome OS Gallery app on this machine will gain the ability to edit photos with AI as well. Users will be able to remove backgrounds in one step and create stickers, all without sending data to the cloud.
As more Chromebooks launch with powerful NPUs, we could see these features expand. However, they are exclusive to the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 for now. This laptop is available today at Best Buy for $749.
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