Your Google Pixel has just permanently lost an exclusive feature

Launched in 2024, the Pixel Studio app has now joined the graveyard of apps that Google has left in its wake, according to a report from Android Authority. The search giant has been slowly dismantling it in recent updates, and the latest release, version 2.7, will put an end to the AI ​​image generation app that has been marred by controversy over its ability to generate questionable content.

As the name suggests, Pixel Studio was exclusive to Google’s first-party phones, starting with the Pixel 9 generation. It was a very capable app – arguably too capable at times – with the ability to edit images so that they were almost indistinguishable from real photographs (a scenario that was likely partly responsible for Google developing technology to allow its Photos app to identify AI content). Following the 2.7 update, users who launch the app will be taken to Google’s leading AI platform, Gemini, which now includes many similar AI-based image generation tools thanks to Nano Banana integration.

Pixel Studio gave users the ability to generate images from text prompts and edit existing photos to, for example, remove unwanted elements from the background, adjust the lighting, or change the style to match the aesthetic of your favorite anime or video game. It’s a familiar toolset today, but in 2024 it was still new. Studio performed both of these tasks remarkably well, generating images and edits that looked like real images or as if they had never been retouched.

Studio also lets you create stickers that you can deploy in other apps or insert into text messages to annoy and amuse your friends. However, this feature disappeared as of update 2.2. Subsequent updates removed virtually all core features, leaving the current iteration as a shell of its own (which requires you to use Gemini for your AI imaging needs). Although the Android Authority story states that you can still access previous creations, you should quickly retrieve anything you want to save, as there is no guarantee that you will be able to launch the app after future updates.

While Google hasn’t made an explicit statement about why it’s discontinuing Pixel Studio, the writing has been on the wall for some time. Beyond the troubling issues that allowed users to generate images that defied Google’s own security guidelines, the company has made clear that it is committed to unifying its AI tools within the Gemini platform (which has the advantage of being cross-device and cross-platform).

Most Pixel Studio features already exist in Gemini, including generating images from text and editing existing images. This significant overlap means that Google should have continued to update and support Studio on Pixel phones, even if Gemini was also readily available. It would also have been inconsistent with the continued focus on assistants rather than apps that Google has pushed in the Android ecosystem. Lately, Pixel Studio was just a thin UI wrapper on top of Google’s core models anyway. So it makes sense that the company would want to skip a step and expose the models directly or as a quick-access AI assistant.