Google's AI-Powered Lifestyle App 'Dreambeans' Now Free in the US

Google's AI assistant Gemini crawls your Google apps for "more personalized suggestions," in a feature they call Personal Intelligence. Now when given permission, an Android/iOS app called Dreambeans "uses Personal Intelligence to connect information from Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, Photos, YouTube and Search History, to curate a finite collection of daily stories designed to spark new ideas." In a slick new video Google says the app will "surface what matters to you." The blog 9to5Google notes that after previously requiring a subscription, Dreambeans "is now available for free Google Accounts in the US to test, calling it "very much like a hyper-personalized Google Now or Discover feed." Instead of using stock imagery, each Dreambeans story is accompanied by Nano Banana 2-generated artwork that uses an illustrated style. For example, if Dreambeans recommends a hike, you might see yourself and a group of friends at that location... There's also an "Ask anything" chat experience to get more information. You can leave feedback by tapping the heart or downvoting, while the chat interface allows you to provide more details. "Tune your feed" lets you tell Dreambeans what you "want more stories about" and what it should never show. Or, as TechCrunch senior writer Lucas Ropek puts it, you get a curated list of AI-illustrated "stories" that "will turn your life into a cartoon" [Gozde Oznur, the product lead behind the new app, told TechCrunch the app] has also been built as a doomscrolling antidote, in that it only provides users with a limited number of stories per day — typically 10 to 14. The idea is to get a few inspirational ideas and then go out and live your life, she said. A lot of companies are currently trying to court the user that is sick of phone addiction. I recently reviewed a startup, Bond, which also uses AI to auto-generate lifestyle suggestions for the user. What about privacy protections? According to Oznur, they are pretty solid. The only person with access to the app's stories is the user, she said. Users can also delete their data whenever they want, and can choose which Google services they want to connect to the tool.

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