Google released its experimental AI assistant COSMO on the Play Store by mistake on Thursday, only to withdraw it hours later. The app operates locally on Android devices using the Gemini Nano model, enabling features without an internet connection. COSMO can suggest tasks, draft documents, control other apps, and retrieve information stored on the phone. Sources familiar with the matter say the release appears to be an internal test that may be presented at Google I/O later this month.
The app was briefly available to users in the United States and Canada before Google removed it from the store. A company spokesperson confirmed the error but declined to comment on the timing or reasons behind the accidental release. COSMO’s local operation sets it apart from cloud-based AI assistants, which require constant connectivity. This approach could reduce latency and improve privacy, though it also limits the amount of data the assistant can process.
COSMO’s capabilities include generating to-do lists, composing emails, editing spreadsheets, and summarizing articles read on the device. It can also interact with other installed apps to automate workflows, such as drafting a calendar invitation from a Gmail thread. The assistant relies on on-device machine learning models, meaning it does not send user data to external servers for processing. Google has not announced when or if COSMO will be officially launched.
Industry analysts see this as a sign that Google is accelerating its push into on-device AI. The company has been integrating AI features into Android for over two years, starting with the Pixel 8’s call screening tool. Competitors like Apple and Samsung have also moved toward local AI processing to address privacy concerns and reduce cloud dependency. Google’s choice to test COSMO publicly suggests confidence in the model’s stability, even if the rollout was unintended.
The accidental release comes ahead of Google I/O, its annual developer conference scheduled for May 20. At past events, Google has unveiled new AI tools and platform updates. If COSMO is featured, it would mark one of the first public demonstrations of a fully local AI assistant on Android. Until then, users will have to rely on Google’s existing AI features, which still depend heavily on cloud processing.
Google has not provided details on whether the app will return or what changes might be made before any official launch. For now, COSMO remains a behind-the-scenes experiment, though its brief appearance offers a rare look at Google’s next steps in mobile AI.
Source: itavisen.no