MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Alphabet's Google on Aug 13 unveiled a lineup of new Pixel smartphones with deeper integrations of its artificial intelligence technology as it races to incorporate AI into its hardware.

The event at Alphabet's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California, bucks a tradition Google has maintained with every iteration of Pixel — its flagship smartphone launched in October 2016 — to announce the new version in the autumn.

The earlier timing is Google's latest bid to keep up with rivals in injecting AI features into its consumer-facing products and comes ahead of Apple's planned launch of a new iPhone in September.

In June, Apple announced that devices including its latest version of iPhones would get upgrades that include "Apple Intelligence," a slew of generative AI-powered features within native applications, and an integration with ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI.

"We've seen a lot of AI announcements in a short burst of time as of late. I don't think you want to sit on it too long if you're Google," said IDC analyst Linn Huang.

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