Thousands of attendees waiting to enter Google I/O were redirected to another entrance, and the event started on time. Groups including the No Tech for Genocide coalition and other groups from across the Bay Area held a sign reading "Google stop fueling genocide". They chanted "we won't stop til Nimbus gets dropped," referencing a 1.2bn project supported by Amazon and Google that provides provides artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli government. Speaking before the crowd, a protester said people have gathered in Mountain View to attend Google's highly anticipated annual conference, but that protesters were there to share "the real story". Google is slated to announce major updates to its products at the conference today, most of them focused on AI. "What you will not be hearing from today's speakers is that right now, as I stand here before you, the state of Israel is using Google technology to execute history's first AI-powered genocide," they said. A number of attendees were current and former employees of the company, including Ariel Koren, a former Google worker who says she was pushed out of the company in 2022 for speaking out against Project Nimbus.

Security experts say that artificial intelligence, including machine learning, data models and adaptive intelligence, could be used to detect threats more quickly, mitigate attacks and provide other cybersecurity solutions. While AI is already used for malware detection and identifying phishing attacks, future potential solutions could include blocking attacks through classification and integrating with programs such as Gmail.

That has spurred speculation that Google will release a virtual-reality device to compete with Facebook's new Oculus Rift headset, as well as Samsung's Gear VR. Analysts also believe Google may release an artificial-intelligent gadget to compete with Amazon's Echo, which is a cylinder-like device that includes a virtual assistant named Alexa.