Top AI on Android updates for building intelligent experiences from Google I/O ‘26

Posted by Jingyu Shi, Staff Developer Relations Engineer At Google I/O 2026, we introduced Android’s shift from an operating system to an intelligence system. We also demonstrated how you can build intelligent experiences natively with the system and bring the power of Google’s AI into your apps. If you missed these updates, check out our quick recap video here:  1.

  AppFunctions (Android MCP) provides you with more control over how your app integrates with the intelligence system.   Android MCP: AppFunctions allows your application to act as an on-device Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. It means you seamlessly share your app's tools, services and data to the system and agents.

  Early Access Program : Want to be among the first apps to deploy app functions in production? Join our early access program today! To see it in action, check out the live demo showcased during the What’s New in Android presentation.

  2. On-Device Power with Gemini Nano 4 Preview Last month, we launched Gemma 4 , our state-of-the-art open models. You can already preview and prototype with the next generation of Gemini Nano (Nano 4) models with the AIcore developer preview .

To make productionizing with Gemini Nano more reliable and performant, we are adding a few new features in ML Kit GenAI APIs :  Prototype to Production:  Transition from prototyping in the AICore Developer Preview to building production-ready apps using the ML Kit GenAI Prompt API to leverage Gemini Nano 4 that’s launching in flagship devices later this year.   Prefix Caching : It optimizes your on-device inference performance with the prompt API. The new Prefix caching reduces inference time by storing and reusing the intermediate LLM state of processing a shared and recurring part of the prompt.

For highly customized or niche use cases, you can also use LiteRT-LM to bring your own fine-tuned small language model to Android. 3. Hybrid Inference & Agents To help you build more advanced AI features like hybrid inference and explore building in-app agents, we’ve released new APIs, framework and guidances: Firebase AI Logic Hybrid Inference : This new API provides the simple routing capability between on-device models and powerful cloud infrastructure.

You can set explicit orchestration modes, such as PREFER_ON_DEVICE , PREFER_CLOUD , ONLY_ON_DEVICE , or ONLY_CLOUD , based on your need. A2UI Jetpack Compose Renderer: The new A2UI library allows your agents to "speak UI". With the upcoming Jetpack Compose Renderer, you can automatically render these A2UI messages as native UI components.