Several Pixel phone users recently found themselves with extra cash in their Google Pay accounts, ranging from a few dollars to over $1,000. The notification claimed that the funds were a reward for “dogfooding the Google Pay remittance experience,” a term used in the tech industry to refer to the testing of a new feature or service before it is publicly released.
However, instead of the payments going to the intended recipients, some Pixel phone users who were not involved in testing received the unexpected windfall. Google has since informed affected users that it will attempt to reverse the payments, but if they are unable to do so, the money will be theirs to keep.
Users will be able to keep the funds deposited by mistake.
In other news, Google is also preparing to launch its Pixel Fold and Pixel 7a smartphones in June, with the foldable Pixel Fold reportedly set to debut in mid-June. The company is also introducing a new blue variant of the Pixel Buds A-Series.
Additionally, a select group of Pixel Superfans has been offered the opportunity to try out the company’s new conversational AI service, Bard, which uses a Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) to combine “the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models.” Bard is still in the experimental stage and has limited availability, with users placed on a waiting list for early access.
Filed in . Read more about Google and Google Pay.