The age of the generative AI gadget has been disappointing at best. Devices like Humane’s AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 were disappointments at launch, falling victim to their own respective hype cycles. Generative AI has a future on consumer hardware, but you’d be forgiven for believing otherwise. The technology is having its moment on handsets, and headphones are a good natural extension of that push. Announced at Tuesday's Made By Google Event, the Pixel Buds Pro 2 represent an effort to take that next step.

The earbuds arrive a little more than two years since the company first released the product. As with every bit of hardware presented at Tuesday's event, Google is prioritizing its generative AI experience — specifically, Gemini Live's conversational capabilities.

"With new Gemini Live in your earbuds, you can have a real give-and-take conversation with an AI assistant," the company said in a statement to TechCrunch. "It feels like you're talking to a close confidante, and it even works when your phone is in your pocket. You can ask different types of questions, with more open-ended queries, more walk-and-talks and longer sessions that are more contemplative. It's like having a co-worker that one can always brainstorm with or discuss some idea together."

With the "close confidante" bit aside, the new Pixel Buds might finally be the actualization of something Google and many other companies have been working toward for years. The lack of natural-language conversational capacity has long been a roadblock to wider smart assistant adoption. Companies have been overpromising and underdelivering on that front for a decade now.

One of the things LLM-based neural networks do really well is simulate conversation, so Gemini Live is a natural next step here. Whether most users will feel comfortable with "walk-and-talks and longer sessions that are more contemplative," however, is probably a question for a sociologist.

The appointment of Gemini Live for the Buds comes as Google declares Gemini as the default assistant on its new Pixel 9 line. It's powered in part by the earbuds' Tensor A1 chip, which marks the first time Google applies its mobile-chip-making know-how to the Pixel Buds line.

The new chip, Google said, also made it possible to shrink the size of the Buds by 27%, with faster processing speeds and battery life bumped up to a stated 12 hours on the Buds and 48 hours combined with the charging case. The Buds Pro 2 also support Google's Find My Device, so you can locate lost ones on a map or have them and the charging case ring out if they're buried under a pile of clothes in your apartment.

New Silent Seal passive noise canceling, plus bettering the active noise-canceling technology "cancel up to twice as much noise as before," says Google. The $229 Buds begin shipping September 26.