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Ah, GLIC. I’ve been scratching my head about this interesting project for a few months, now. Though I spend a good deal of time in the Chromium Repositories, there are things that I can’t make sense of, and GLIC has been one of them. I knew it was going to be some sort of add-on to Chrome (my mind went to Help Me Read/Write-type of services), but I had no idea what it was actually set to become.
Today, I wonder no longer. Thanks to the digging of @Leopeva64 over on X, it’s now become painfully clear that GLIC – Gemini Live in Chrome – is Google’s next big step in bringing Gemini front and center for Chrome users across the board. And in the Canary channel of Chrome, the early stages of this effort are already quite evident.
Already, a dedicated GLIC section is showing up in Chrome Canary settings and the ability to toggle a Gemini icon directly in the window’s title bar, and even the system tray, shows that Google is aiming for seamless integration of their best AI model directly in the Chrome browser.
The fact that these features are currently in Canary means they’re still in the early stages of development. As with any experimental feature, there’s no guarantee that GLIC will make its way to the stable version of Chrome. However, the loads of code changes in the Chromium Gerrit suggest that Google is serious about bringing Gemini front and center in the Chrome browser.
The big question is how this will all undoubtedly be weaved into ChromeOS. While a similar browser-based integration like we’re seeing for Windows above would work, I could see Google taking this much farther on Chromebooks to continue enhancing the AI experience on their own hardware. Time will tell for sure, and I’m already attempting some tests to see what GLIC will be like on a Chromebook in Canary; but I have a good feeling we’ll hear about all of this pretty soon. Maybe at the next Chromebook Showcase?
VIA: PC World
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