Out with the old and in with the new, the Google Assistant is making way for Gemini on mobile devices.
In a blog post, today, the company has revealed plans to sunset the near decade-old Assistant later this year and is encouraging users to make the switch to Gemini now.
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“When we launched Google Assistant in 2016, natural language processing and voice recognition technology unlocked a more natural way to get help from Google,” the company says in a blog post. “Nearly a decade later, we’re in the midst of another platform shift — this time, generative AI is transforming the way we interact with technology.”
As well as the best Android phones, Google says tablets, cars, headphones, speakers, smart displays, TVs and smartwatches that currently rely on Assistant support, will be transitioned over to Gemini.
Because transition will be staged over the next few months, Google says Assistant will remain active until, eventually, it’s not. If your device isn’t capable of running Gemini, the Assistant will still run.
If you were happy with your current voice-based assistant, how it can bring you speedy information from across the web, bring you media on demand, your latest calendar appointments, the weather, and more… well, tough.
If you’d prefer not to lean on generative AI for your voice-based assistant needs, well, tough. Google is assuring everyone that Gemini’s better and it is adding the features people most enjoy about the Assistant to compensate. They include playing music, setting timers, or taking action from the lock screen, Google says.
“Gemini’s capabilities go far beyond the Google Assistant, and it can also provide an entirely new kind of help. Features like Gemini Live for free-flowing, multimodal conversations and Deep Research, which transforms Gemini into a personal research assistant, are only possible with AI — and we’re just getting started,” the company says.
End of an era
This was inevitable, I suppose. Hopefully, even with its focus on generative AI features, the Gemini assistant will continue to excel at the more basic machine learning tasks people relied on Google Assistant to accomplish for them.
