Late last year, Google introduced Bard, its new AI-powered digital assistant and chatbot. It debuted alongside the Pixel 8 series in October and was available for the web as well. Now, Google has renamed Bard to Gemini. The company is integrating Gemini into Android and making it available for iOS and the web as well.
Google Gemini is now available for Galaxy smartphones and tablets in the US.
Google Bard is now renamed to Google Gemini
Google Gemini is now available on the Play Store for Android smartphones and tablets, but it is available only in a few countries. For iPhones and iPads, Gemini doesn't have a separate app; it is integrated into the Google Search app. On Android devices, Gemini is accessible from its own app, and users can also access it by long pressing the power button, swiping diagonally from the lower corners of the screen, or saying “Hey Google.” It starts in a small overlay window on top of other apps, and you can type your question using the keyboard or use your voice. You can even attach an image for more context and ask Gemini about things in that image.
Since Gemini integrates with Google's own services, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Flights, Google Maps, Google Sheets, and YouTube, you can request related data from your account on those services. For example, you can ask Gemini to summarize one of your emails or ask it to summarize a document that you created in Google Docs. You can also use Gemini to generate images or text. For example, you can ask it to create a social media post to wish your family member on their birthday. You can also ask it to create a wallpaper as per your requirements. Since Gemini understands context, you can ask follow-up questions.
Google Gemini will be available in more countries and languages soon
With this launch, Google has started slowly replacing Google Assistant. Bard can do some of the smart home tasks that Google Assistant is capable of, and Google said that it is working to bring more smart home-related features. Gemini is currently optional, and you have to enable it manually. Moreover, it is only available on Android devices that have 4GB of RAM (or more) and are running Android 12 (or newer). It is currently available in the US in the English language. Support for Japanese and Korean languages soon. It will be released in more countries, including Europe, and languages soon.
Google says that the launch of Gemini is its first step towards the first true AI assistant that is conversational, helpful, and multimodal. Multimodal means that it can understand text, images, and other media simultaneously and can return answers or information by understanding those inputs all at once.
