Google has announced new smart features coming to Chromebook Plus laptops, including the Live Translate feature for automatic captions across the system.
Live Translate has been available on Pixel phones, and now it’s coming to Chromebook Plus laptops. Like its Pixel counterpart, Live Translate on Chromebook Plus is a systemwide feature that's not bound to any particular app. Instead, Live Translate works no matter what app is used. The feature automatically translates whatever is on your screen into over 100 languages, whether it be a Zoom meeting, a YouTube livestream, a personal video, etc. Chromebook Plus is Google's brand name for Chromebooks with more powerful hardware—not all Chromebooks are Chromebook Plus laptops, but all Chromebook Plus laptops are Chromebooks.
Live Translate makes foreign content more accessible to people and saves time compared to manual translation, Google explained. Keep in mind you’ll need a Chromebook Plus laptop to use Live Translate because it doesn’t work on regular Chromebooks. That’s because translating languages in real-time is a very computationally intensive task that requires local AI processing for speed instead of using the cloud.
Noteworthy, the Chrome browser has had automatic live captions for calls and media since 2022, but they don’t translate on the fly. Other companies have similar features. Apple’s devices, for example, can create a real-time transcription of any spoken audio, including live conversations around you. Microsoft Edge can seamlessly translate web videos into various languages, and Windows supports similar capabilities.
Google said other AI-powered features will be coming to Chromebook Plus laptops aside from the ability to chat with Gemini. For example, a feature dubbed “Help me read” will enable you to summarize PDF documents, articles, or websites with a right-click action.
The company said that video calling will look and sound better thanks to computational audio improvements and appearance enhancements. The Google Recorder app that proved popular with Pixel owners is also coming to Chromebook Plus. Like its Android version, you can use Recorder for Chromebook Plus to capture audio such as lectures or presentations with automatic transcription, which includes labeled speakers as a nice touch.
Source: Google