The GenAI offering on smartphones has expanded once again. Google is launching its own Gemini app in more countries and regions, including most of Europe as well as the United Kingdom.
The Gemini app offers so-called multimodal AI, meaning it can respond to text, images and sound. Google urges users to consult the AI assistant for everything from a flat tire to writing a thank-you bill.
Replacing Google Assistant?
With the app, Google seems to be anticipating a replacement for Google Assistant, the “AI assistant” of yesteryear. This offers users relatively limited voice control to play music or set a timer, for example. “Hey Google” can also be used to turn on the Gemini app, which adopts many Assistant features and more.
Currently launching on Android, Gemini will also be available on iOS directly from the Google app in the coming weeks.
Interestingly, Google is positioning the Gemini features in a hardware agnostic. Although the company taps into the available processors whenever possible, the app can run entirely in the cloud. On phones, it likely will for the most part. Microsoft, with its Copilot offering, eventually seeks to shift workloads to end users, by contrast.
This means that the Gemini app will presumably remain virtually 1-to-1 the same on Android as it does on a Chromebook or Chromebook Plus.
Also read: Chromebook Plus gets AI writing help and Gemini app
Copilot counterpart
The Gemini app offers similar features to Microsoft Copilot, which is also available on Android and iOS. Formerly known as Bing Chat, it also allows you to converse with an AI assistant about cooking recipes, ask it to generate images, and let it improve your writing.
Whether Gemini will eventually take on a different character is somewhat obvious. Despite a problematic introduction of “AI Overviews” for Google Search users in the United States, AI-search seems to be coming.