Google recently rolled out an update for the Google app. The update reportedly caused severe battery draining and overheating issues for some Pixel users. These issues were mostly reported by Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series users. Users posted about their concerns and discussed the issues on online public forums. This is similar to an earlier Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro bug back in December last year, which made the models deliver weaker haptic feedback. The company then paused the update and rolled out a patch to fix the bugs.
According to a 9to5Google report, the company confirmed to them that the battery draining and overheating was caused by a “backend change” within the Google app, which has ended up affecting a “subset of Android devices.”
The tech giant added that it rolled out a fix to the bug shortly after taking note of the problems users were facing. Google claims that impacted users should see their Pixel handsets return to normal behaviour immediately. The fix is a server side update, and does not require any installation of a software update, the company confirmed.
Meanwhile, Google is also introducing two new image search features to combat the spread of misinformation, particularly now that artificial intelligence techniques have made the fabrication of photorealistic fakes easy and accessible.
The first new feature provides information such as when an image or similar ones were originally indexed by Google, where they first appeared, and where else they’ve appeared online. This feature is called ‘About this image.’ With this feature, Google believes, the viewers will be able to identify the original source while contextualising an image.
Google also said it will label every AI-generated image made by its tools as such, and it is collaborating with other websites and services to ensure that the same markup is applied to the files they distribute. Google has on board Midjourney and Shutterstock, and its objective is to guarantee that all AI material that shows up on search results is labelled as such.