Best Google AI tools 2026

Google AI Studio

Playground

Google's web playground for building with the Gemini models — prompt design, system instructions, multi-turn chat, image and audio inputs, structured output, and one-click export to the Gemini API SDKs. The fastest way to go from idea to working prototype without writing a line of backend code.

Google's consumer assistant powered by the Gemini 2.x model family, with deep research, canvas, image generation, and live audio conversations. It is a strong default when your team already lives in Google Workspace, since it can summarize threads and draft replies in Docs, Sheets, and Gmail.

The developer entry point for building on Gemini, with the same SDKs that AI Studio exports — JavaScript, Python, Go, and REST. Pricing is pay-per-token with a generous free tier, and the API supports tool calling, structured output, file uploads, and the Live API for real-time multimodal sessions.

NotebookLM

Research assistant

An AI-powered notebook grounded on the sources you upload — PDFs, Google Docs, web pages, YouTube videos, audio files. It generates summaries, study guides, mind maps, and even shareable audio overviews, which makes it our default tool for synthesizing research before writing.

Google Cloud's enterprise AI platform: managed Gemini, third-party models from Anthropic, Meta, and Mistral via Model Garden, plus Agent Builder, evaluation, fine-tuning, and the MLOps tooling production deployments need. The right destination once a Gemini API prototype is ready to scale.

Imagen

Image generation

Google DeepMind's text-to-image model family, available through AI Studio, Vertex AI, and the Gemini app. Imagen handles photorealism, typography, and brand-consistent style references better than most competitors, and ships with built-in SynthID watermarking for traceability.

Veo

Video generation

DeepMind's text-to-video and image-to-video model. Veo produces high-fidelity clips with consistent characters and camera control, and is available through AI Studio, the Gemini app, and Vertex AI. A serious option for marketing teams that want B-roll, product motion, or short-form ads without a shoot.

Whisk

Image remix

A Google Labs experiment that lets you combine subject, scene, and style images into a new visual using Imagen and Gemini under the hood. It is the easiest way to prototype a visual concept when you do not want to write a long prompt — drop three reference images and iterate.

Gemini Code Assist

Coding assistant

Google's IDE-integrated coding assistant for VS Code, JetBrains, and Cloud Workstations. It offers chat, code completion, and codebase-aware suggestions, with a free individual tier that includes generous monthly usage — a credible alternative to GitHub Copilot for teams already on Google Cloud.

User-built custom Gemini assistants with their own system prompt, knowledge files, and instructions — the closest Google equivalent to OpenAI's Custom GPTs. Useful for codifying recurring workflows like brand-voice copy, support triage, or briefing intake without writing any code.

Hosted Jupyter notebooks with free GPU and TPU runtimes, plus a Gemini-powered AI side panel that explains code, fixes errors, and generates new cells. The default environment for prototyping with open models, training small fine-tunes, and running quick data analyses.

Google-owned hub for datasets, competitions, and pre-trained models, including the open Gemma family. A useful starting point when you need a clean dataset for evaluation, a baseline notebook to learn from, or a place to publish work and get peer review.

A cloud IDE (formerly Project IDX) with Gemini built in, designed for full-stack web and mobile prototyping. Spin up a Next.js, Flutter, or Astro project from a template, get an AI agent that can edit files and run terminals, and deploy straight to Firebase Hosting in one click.

An open-source TypeScript and Go framework from the Firebase team for building production AI features and agents — flows, tool calling, evaluations, observability, and a local dev UI. The pragmatic option when you want structure around Gemini API calls without adopting a heavier orchestration framework.

Google Labs

Experiments hub

The umbrella site where Google ships experimental AI tools before they graduate — Whisk, NotebookLM, ImageFX, MusicFX, VideoFX, and a rotating cast of others. Worth bookmarking and checking quarterly: this is where the next default Google AI surface usually shows up first.