To say that old-fashioned typing is due for an upgrade would be an understatement.
It’s something we all do every single day, but the fundamental way we type has remained unchanged for more than 150 years. A Victorian typewriter is functionally identical to the virtual smartphone keyboard of 2026 – aside from a few emojis, of course.
But a revolution is surely imminent. Many consumer-focused AI tools operate on a time-saving premise, but what about writing a longer piece? AI can’t help if you want to compose it yourself. (And I really hope you do.)
A Victorian typewriter is functionally identical to the virtual smartphone keyboard of 2026
Voice typing has been around for more than three decades, but its accuracy varies hugely, ranging from producing the occasional typo to a wildly inaccurate transcript. Making sense of it and editing it down to a logical piece of writing often takes longer than just typing it out yourself.
Of course, the big problem here is that the way we speak and write is totally different. Speech is messy by its very nature, with people often self-editing on the fly and including lots of pauses and filler words. And it’s something with which current text-to-speech services tend to struggle.
But could Google finally have a solution in Android 17? Or will it be yet another opportunity for AI to hallucinate?
Next-level transcription
As part of Google’s wide-ranging deployment of its ‘Gemini Intelligence’ AI agents, Gboard’s voice-to-type feature is set for a major upgrade.
Known as ‘Rambler’, the new-look mode is designed to actually interpret what you’re saying, rather than merely transcribing it.
In a Google demo, it was impressively agile, allowing the speaker to remove an item from the shopping list they’d just made, simply by saying they didn’t actually need it. In another example, it turned a rambling response into a coherent reply:
However, these are relatively simple use cases. I’d like to see how it handles a longer, stream-of-consciousness input, a situation where deciding what (if anything) to omit will be much more challenging. Historically, AI hasn’t exactly proven itself to be flawless at deciding what is and isn’t relevant.
At least if it’s wide of the mark, voice-based edits should be much easier. Gemini’s abilities here go far beyond typos and tone, enabling you to transform the structure of text and add emojis, resulting in a much more polished result. It’s the sort of thing that would take ages using the current tools.
Historically, AI hasn’t exactly proven itself to be flawless at deciding what is and isn’t relevant
The Rambler feature has another advantage for bilinguals. Google says it can automatically recognise when you switch languages, seamlessly continuing its transcription in the new language. Presumably, it will support all 70+ languages that Gemini runs on, though Google has yet to confirm this.
Huge potential – but the proof’s in the pudding
It’s not hard to see the potential impact that such a huge upgrade to voice-to-text abilities could have.
If accurate, it’d take a lot of the pain out of typing out a long message or email, without having to hand over any of your creative abilities to generative AI.
Rambler could also be a game-changing accessibility feature, allowing blind or visually impaired people to be confident that their messages and emails accurately convey what they’re trying to say.
Perhaps – eventually – it could even replace regular typing as people’s go-to method for creating written text.
Could I see myself using it instead of a keyboard to write articles? Absolutely! But that would depend upon it having a very high degree of accuracy, which we just can’t confirm at this stage.
A very exclusive feature
While Rambler – and more widely, Gemini Intelligence – is set to arrive this summer, its initial rollout will be incredibly limited.
Google says that Gemini Intelligence will only be available on the “most advanced Android devices” – in other words, ones with the latest chipsets and Neural Processing Units (NPUs), which can handle all that AI computation.
Anyron Copeman / Foundry
Initially, Rambler will only be compatible with Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel flagships, and even then, perhaps only with the latest generation. Google says it’s trying to roll out the feature “as broadly as possible”, but if you have a budget or mid-range phone, you might be waiting a long while.
As a regular Pixel 10 Pro XL user, I’m lucky enough to have a compatible device, and I can’t wait to give it a try. Anything to give my hands a break from typing essays on a tiny, onscreen keyboard.
