For all the new features the Pixel 9 brought, one of the most loved additions from last year’s flagship was the new Pixel Weather app, which Google launched alongside the phones. Even though the app dropped the beloved frog mascot, it introduced a much-improved UI, a customizable layout, and more recently, new data like pollen levels.
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Arguably, one of the best features of the Pixel Weather app is the AI-powered weather reports. These small forecast summaries help you quickly understand the weather in your area through a few simple sentences, without needing to dig through temperature charts or data.
These summaries can give you a quick idea of how your day will look and even tell you if you might need an umbrella. While Google made the new Weather app available to all Pixel devices in the October 2024 Feature Drop, the AI weather summaries remained exclusive to the Pixel 9 series — until now.
Pixel 8 and 8a users are starting to see AI forecasts
It now appears that nearly a year after the Pixel 9 launch, Google is expanding access to these AI-generated summaries. As reported by Android Authority, many Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a users have started noticing AI forecasts showing up on their devices as well.
Although there is no official confirmation from Google yet, this likely ties back to the on-device Gemini Nano integration added to the Pixel 8 phones in 2024. It seems the Pixel Weather app is now tapping into Gemini Nano to generate and display these summaries.
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Users on Reddit reporting this feature’s availability have Gemini Nano enabled on their Pixel 8. If you do not see the feature yet, you can try enabling Gemini Nano manually by going to Settings > System > Developer options > AICore Settings, and toggling on the on-device GenAI features. Some users also report seeing a prompt within the Pixel Weather app asking them to enable Gemini.
Regardless, it is great to see Google bringing one of the standout Pixel 9 features to older devices. While it is unclear if this feature will expand to even earlier Pixel models, it is now at least reaching one generation back.
