Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google reveals more clues about its improved voice typing feature in Gboard.
- While Gboard already allows using basic voice commands for editing text, the improved feature could use AI for smarter edits.
- This feature could be powered by Gemini Nano, allowing for quick, on-device editing with voice.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
We spotted more mentions of a Gboard feature, currently labelled “SmartEdit,” which would allow editing text using voice. Gboard already lets you edit text using voice commands, such as “edit” or “delete,” followed by a portion of the text. However, the improved feature could rely on AI to understand more diverse commands and implement them more intelligently.
We found references to SmartEdit in the Gboard app for Android (version 15.6.2 beta). The feature is currently unavailable, but Google has added several examples of voice commands that can be used to edit text.
The images above show several different examples of the ways you will be able to use Gboard’s voice typing to find and edit specific bits in the text. Google appears to label complex commands as “detailed edits,” which will require more processing abilities than simple edits like deleting a particular word. Based on what we have seen, Gboard should be able to insert or edit specific words mid-text and also perform actions such as sending a message. Since these detailed commands require sifting through the text extensively, the use of AI is vital here.
Although we could activate the examples, we couldn’t activate and use the feature ourselves, making it challenging to assess how much we can modify these commands. Since AI powers the feature — and most likely, Gemini Nano models, the accuracy with which Gboard will be able to interpret such requests remains to be tested.
