Google's AI assistant known as Gemini is getting loads of new features, including a more conversational Gemini Live mode, new extensions, and more contextual capabilities.
Wish Google’s AI chatbot was more conversational? If so, then you may be interested in trying out Gemini Live, which is rolling out today.
Gemini Live is a more conversational version of Google’s AI chatbot service called Gemini. It was teased at Google I/O 2024 back in May but is finally starting to roll out today.
Why today? The Google Pixel 9 was just announced today, and to hype up the launch as well as get more people to use Gemini Advanced, Google is making the Gemini Live experience available only to people who have access to Gemini Advanced.
How do you get access to Gemini Advanced? You have to sign up for the Google One AI Premium plan, which costs $19.99 per month but is free for 1 year if you purchase a Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, or Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
Gemini Live is accessed by tapping a button on the bottom right of the Gemini app. Once opened, you can speak conversationally to the Gemini chatbot, meaning you don’t have to continuously invoke Gemini every time you want to ask a new or follow-up question. You can even interrupt Gemini Live like you can (but really shouldn’t) in real life. And if you don’t like the default voice used for Gemini Live, you can change it to one that sounds more appealing to you.
That’s not all that’s new for Gemini. Starting today, you can also hook Gemini up to your Google Calendar, Google Keep, and Google Tasks accounts, making it more intelligent. By enabling these three new extensions, you can ask questions with your calendar entries as context, add items to your shopping list, or set a reminder to complete a task.
And to make Gemini more helpful, the app is now more contextual. The Gemini window no longer takes up the entire screen when it spits out a response; instead, it sits on top of whatever app you’re currently looking at. Thanks to this, you can now easily copy images generated by Gemini into apps that support drag-and-drop. If you have a Pixel 9 Pro Fold, you can even place the Gemini window into split-screen mode, which lets you ask the chatbot questions while you have another app open.
Gemini can also now suggest questions or search queries based on what you’re looking at. If you’re browsing YouTube, for example, Gemini can show a suggestion chip to add the video you're watching as context so you can ask questions about it. If you’re reading a PDF in the Files by Google app, Gemini can do something similar, pulling in the document as context so the chatbot can answer any questions you have about it. Both of these capabilities require Gemini Advanced, though.
Lastly, if you have a device that has Gemini Nano with multimodality built-in, such as any of the new Google Pixel 9 devices, then Gemini can contextually suggest things to ask it in even more applications.
These updates to Gemini come as rival products like ChatGPT have captured the attention of the world with their almost-too-natural sounding conversational chatbots. By providing Gemini Live access to all new Pixel 9 Pro sales, Google is hoping that its advantage in reach will propel them to the lead in the AI chatbot race.
