Google AI Updates: August 6, 2026

1. Google Reshuffles DeepMind Leadership as Hassabis Moves to Chair Role

Google. Google announced a leadership restructuring at DeepMind on August 5, with CEO Demis Hassabis transitioning to chair of DeepMind and chief scientist for all of Alphabet, while CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu becomes senior vice president of DeepMind reporting directly to Sundar Pichai. Alongside the reshuffle, longtime Google chief scientist Jeff Dean and senior fellow Sanjay Ghemawat are departing to found an independent public-benefit corporation called Discovery Loop, focused on automating machine learning and scientific research. Alphabet shares fell nearly 4% following the news. Source

2. Google to Retire Google Assistant Starting September as Gemini Takes Over

Google. Google will begin discontinuing its legacy Google Assistant in September 2026, replacing it with Gemini across Android phones and Wear OS wearables. The move consolidates Google’s assistant strategy around its frontier model line and ends a product that shipped across billions of devices for nearly a decade. Source