Google prepares to bring AI Mode PDF uploads to Android

For all the times we’ve used AI by now, we all probably have a few stories that really stand out in our head — both the great successes and the most embarrassing failures, no doubt. When AI does end up working the best for us, it’s often in very targeted situations — and that’s especially true when it’s operating on files we share with it. One of the best ways to interact with AI on our phones is now working on an upgrade that could make those kind of interactions even easier.

Google’s AI Mode in Search has emerged as a really handy way to combine the power of Gemini with Google’s vast reference capabilities. It’s easy to access through Google’s Android app (and its associated widgets), and lets you upload images from your gallery or submit new photos straight from your phone’s camera. But so far, it’s lacked an option to share any other kinds of files.

This still isn’t live just yet, but as we were poring over Google’s recent version 17.9.50.sa.arm64 update, we’ve been able to get an early look at an addition here that adds a new “Files” option to attachments.

That should probably just say “PDFs,” since that’s unsurprisingly all this seems to work with, but we’re just happy to see the option coming to the app at all. Right now, AI Mode on the web already supports such attachments — and technically, you can even visit that in your phone’s browser to share files with AI Mode. But we just haven’t had an easy way to do that with the way most of us access AI Mode on Android.

Beyond that, we’re also seeing Google experiment with an all-new upload interface:

This one’s a bit wonky, and doesn’t even show the camera option we already have now, but it does sort of fit with the idea of expanding the kinds of attachments that work with AI Mode — certainly, it’s giving us enough space for a lot more options there. For the moment, though, it’s unclear if Google will ultimately go in this direction, or continue with the smaller list we have now.