Here’s how Google is quietly reimagining how you use your Android phone

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AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini are well-equipped to summarize lengthy texts and answer our everyday questions in language we can understand. However, these new-age AI assistants still feel a bit hamstrung when you ask them to complete tasks inside apps, especially on our smartphones.

At Google I/O , Google showcased how it wants Gemini to become an actual assistant and handle tasks on your behalf. While it looks futuristic, almost sci-fi-esque, there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening under the hood. Google’s new AppFunctions framework is laying the groundwork for Android to become an operating system where AI — not just Gemini — can coordinate apps on your behalf.

The name itself hints at how this framework will help AI talk to your apps, but allow me to break it down for you.

You and I navigate apps using the buttons and menus on the screen. We primarily use our phones based on visual feedback, but that is not how AI would perform tasks on our behalf. An app would need to expose its internal functions to the AI (hence the name) so that something like Gemini or Siri can directly interact with its actions.

For example, Uber could expose its ride-hailing flow to AI so it can book a ride for you, while Amazon could allow AI to view your frequently ordered items and place your monthly grocery order. That is where Android’s new AppFunctions framework comes into play, letting apps and AI communicate directly in the background without you having to watch every action on your screen.

Imagine giving AI a multi-step task to complete on your behalf. Say you wanted to find a recipe from your favorite YouTube channel, create a shopping list in Google Keep, and order all the ingredients from Amazon for a weekend party.

Tools like Perplexity Comet can already perform tasks like these by controlling a browser window, opening tabs, and navigating websites on your behalf. The problem is that this approach is quite inefficient. The AI isn’t familiar with every website and service you use. So, it has to visually analyze pages, identify buttons, navigate menus, and rely on trial and error to perform even simple tasks like finding the cart button.