Google Play Store's AI makeover starts today – here are the changes

Google wants AI to help you to spend both more time and less time in its Play Store

• 🤖 AI-generated app reviews and FAQ summaries expand

• 🦸‍♂️ Curated Spaces launches (Comics section in Japan today)

• 🎮 Google Play on PC allows for multi-game gameplay

• ✂️ Discount: 80% off Google Play Pass discount

• 🎁 Weekly giveaways and in-person activations

The Google Play Store is being redesigned with AI so that you’ll want to spend more time in the app but spend less time finding exactly what you want. The Play Store, in effect, is becoming more of a destination than a drive-by digital store. We saw Apple do this with editorial in its App Store several years ago. Now Google is doing it with AI.

Google Play plans to save you time

Google is expanding its use of AI-generated summaries of app reviews and FAQs that distill whether or not an app is right for you (sort of like we see from Amazon reviews). It’ll now let you compare apps in similar categories to speed up that decision.

Maybe the most helpful feature is that you’ll be able to more easily manage subscribe and resubscribe commitments to apps and services directly from the Play Store in a single menu. Personalized suggestions to sign up for Spotify Premium Student and Walmart+ can also be made without leaving Google’s all-in-one app store.

‘Collections’ launches in the US today

Google is also launching ‘Collections’ today in the US, surfacing content from apps you’ve already installed among the Shop, Watch, and Listen categories.

This menu, which also has a widget that can live on your device’s home screen, will let you jump back into a show or continue shopping, for example. Google reps stressed that the easy-to-access "Personalization in Play" menu will allow for privacy and full control over what gets displayed, saying, “We recognize how important it is to balance a personalized experience with transparency and control.”

Down the line, we’re told you’ll be able to cross reference prices among installed retail apps, although that feature wasn’t ready to be demoed to us this week. It also seems like another way in which AI is replacing the need to hunt down information from blogs and top ten picks, giving Google a more editorial role in users’ app decision-making.

Curated Spaces in the Play Store

Google’s biggest leap into editorial comes with Curated Spaces, allowing you to discover several apps across one topic. It first piloted the idea in India around the sport of Cricket.

Today, Google is launching ‘Comics’ as a curated space in Japan, partnering with popular Japanese comic publishers to offer free first-chapter previews, live events and trailers, editor picks and fan reviews even from apps you haven't installed.

Expect new curated spaces down the line in various regions.

Play Games will let you game while you game

Google’s answer to Apple Arcade offering over 1,000 games and apps with no ads or in-app purchases is getting new features on the PC – and a discount. New offers for this paid service are coming to Asphalt Legends Unite today, and Call of Duty: Mobile and Candy Crush Saga on August 1.

There’s a new multi-game experience rolling out over the next few weeks, allowing players using the Google Play games on PC service to play multiple games at once. As preposterous as this sounds, Google reps mentioned that hunting for resources in Clash of Clans in the background while playing a more active racing game is where dual-screening a game makes sense.

Normally “about” $5 a month (it’s $29.99 a year), there’s an 80% discount for the first three months in the US, UK, Australia, Japan and Korea. The sign-up promotion lasts three weeks.

Google Play sweeps

Finally, to incentivize you to open up the Play Store more than you do now, Google is launching Super Weekly Prizes for the Diamond, Platinum and Gold members of its Play Points rewards program. This enables people to win Pixel devices, Razer gaming products and other merch.