I can imagine following this approach now when I want to learn about anything, and just continuing the conversation even after Gemini answers my initial query. I still have many concerns: Why is there no direct attribution or sourcing for the information it surfaces? Can I trust that everything it says is accurate? Hsaio says when you exit Gemini Live, you can click on the little “G” icon underneath transcribed text to check its work and run your own Google searches.
But more and more, I find myself thinking that this is the future of search. You just ask, get the answers, and keep talking to learn more. The problem is that Gemini tends to talk a lot. Its responses are verbose, so you’re often waiting a while before you can follow up. Yes, you can interrupt it to move on, but it’s awkward interrupting a voice assistant. I don’t want to be rude!
Where in the World Is Google Assistant?
With all this focus on Gemini and Gemini Live, you’re probably wondering: Where’s Google Assistant? If you tap on your profile icon in the Gemini app, you’ll see an option to Switch to Google Assistant if you want to go back to the old experience, but it’s hard to say how long that option will be available. Currently, there are a few things Assistant can do that Gemini can’t, so there’s a hand-off from one to the other. “Increasingly, Gemini will be able to do those actions on its own,” Hsiao says.
But earlier this month, Google announced new Nest products, which also brought word that Google Assistant will soon be getting a more natural voice, and some of its features will be upgraded with Gemini’s large language models. You’d be able to ask it if a FedEx delivery person showed up at your doorstep, for example, and it’d be able to parse this from your video doorbell’s feed. Motion alerts could be far more descriptive rather than just saying “person detected.”
That means we now have two assistants, and it sounds like Google is completely OK with this at the moment. Hsiao says Gemini will be your personal assistant, the one you can ask about calendar appointments and email invites, all grounded in your personal data. In the home, Google Assistant is your “communal” assistant, because it’s more of a family device. “People don’t want their personal emails to be accessible through voice on a home speaker in their living room where a guest can ask, ‘Hey Google, what’s in Julian’s email.'”
It sounds like a recipe for a branding disaster. It’s already so hard to keep track of all the variations of Gemini already out there (and don’t forget, Gemini was “Bard” when it launched in preview last year). It also might mean certain functions will be limited based on the device you’re using, to prevent a guest from snooping on your emails. If you get used to asking your Gemini on your phone to handle a task, but then you leave your phone in the other room and the Assistant on your Nest Speaker refuses to follow through, isn’t that frustrating?
“We’re still exploring the branding of that, and we’re still in the early development phases,” Hsiao says. “Branding aside, we need to make sure that people get what they want from their most helpful assistant, whether it’s on their personal phone or in the home, and it solves their use cases.”
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