Google accidentally leaked its do-everything AI

Google has accidentally leaked Jarvis, its next-generation AI assistant.

The app was briefly available on the extension store for the Chrome browser, although it's since been removed. Some people did manage to download it before it was taken down again, although they were unable to get it to work.

That's according to The Information (which is behind a paywall).

The listing described Jarvis as "a helpful companion that surfs the web with you", and it's designed to do things on your behalf. For example, if you ask it to perform a task it'll take charge of your computer to find what you need – you might ask Jarvis to buy a particular product or book a specific flight, say.

What do we know about Jarvis?

The project codenamed Jarvis is expected to be officially revealed in December 2024, and it'll initially only be for web browsers. Chrome will be the priority, of course.

The assistant is powered by Gemini 2.0, and is believed to offer similar features to rival services such as Anthropic's Claude AI.

According to Anthropic, its AI is even more capable and not just limited to a web browser. With Claude AI's new "computer use" feature developers can use Claude to use computers in a similar way to people. That includes looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing. However, the company claims it's just experimental at this time.

That software is still in beta stage, and Jarvis is likely to come with a whole bunch of caveats too. Companies are seemingly rush releasing AI services at present, mostly working on a launch first, fix later model.

Jarvis may therefore only be available for testing purposes at first, with the general public advised to wait for a more polished version.

AI software is still very experimental and very unpredictable, but that's not stopping tech firms from pushing it. Apple Intelligence was the main selling point of the iPhone 16 even though most of the world doesn't officially have access to it yet – I'm on the developer beta and only got access to Image Playground and other AI features a few days ago.

The official launch is later this year for UK users – and Samsung is going big on AI too.