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One of the more interesting features of the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro was the AI wallpaper generator, and it’s a feature that apparently won’t be available on the Pixel 8a at launch. Google officially announced the Pixel 8a on May 7, and pre-orders for the device are already available from retailers like Best Buy.
Despite having the same chipset as the two mainline phones, the Tensor G3, the Pixel 8a won’t have the option to create these unique wallpaper options. The AI wallpaper generator lets you select a wallpaper category and then you plug in word combinations to have it come up with something based on those prompts.
You end up with a handful of potential options to choose from, too, with some of them being quite good. Since none of this image generation actually happens on the phones themselves, you might think it would be available on the Pixel 8a from the start. But that won’t be the case.
The Pixel 8a is likely to get the AI wallpaper generator with its first update
According to Mishaal Rahman, this feature is in fact coming to the Pixel 8a. While it’s exclusive to the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, for now, it won’t stay that way. Rahman references a Verizon system update page for the Pixel 8a that’s a build number the phone doesn’t currently have. Which suggests it’s coming in the near future.
The software version for this update is listed as UD2A.240505.001.B1. And one of the listed changes is AI wallpaper enablement. Once this goes live Pixel 8a users will be able to access the AI wallpaper generator the same way Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro users do.
There’s no hardware constraints keeping this feature from the Pixel 8a
As mentioned above there aren’t any hardware constraints that are keeping this feature from the Pixel 8a. Google is merely using it as a flagship feature for the two mainline phones.
It often does this with its flagship Pixels, only to roll those features out to older Pixels down the road in feature drops. It’s not clear when this update will arrive for the Pixel 8a, however. Additionally, since this is a Verizon update specifically, this particular update on other carriers could have different release timing.