If you are an Android user, chances are that you have used Google Assistant or at least heard about the feature, which is owned by Google.
Google Assistant is Apple’s equivalent of Siri. Both are virtual assistants that can answer questions, perform tasks, and control smart home devices. However, they work best within their respective ecosystems – Google Assistant on Android and other Google products and Siri on Apple devices.
500 Million People Use Google Assistant Every Month
Google Assistant has been around since May 2016, and with years of updates, has arguably become near perfect at handling certain tasks. It can look up the weather info, give directions to any location, set alarms and routines, control some device functions, play and guess songs, and even browse the internet, to name a few.
According to Yaguara, up to 500 million people worldwide use Google Assistant monthly, 85 million of which come from the United States. So, it may be right to say that Google Assistant is a day-to-day app and actually a virtual “assistant” as it’s presented to be.
However, it seems Google is slowly rolling away the beloved Google Assistant for Gemini, a new virtual assistant that functions primarily with AI.
Google’s AI Assistant
Gemini was previously called Bard. It started as a direct competitor to ChatGPT. In February, Google launched the Gemini app as an “experimental AI assistant that gives you access to Google’s AI models on your phone” – basically an AI virtual assistant.
The app is currently available for certain Android phones and users in selected countries.
When you choose to use Gemini, it will replace Google Assistant as the primary assistant on your phone. You can also access it by saying “Hey Google.” And because your mobile assistant is powered by AI, it now can help you write, summarise texts, generate images, and other basic actions that a typical AI chatbot can do, which Google Assistant cannot.
However, Gemini currently can only perform some of the same tasks as Google Assistant. It can set alarms or timers, call someone, and control your lights, among other things.
Users Say “It’s Useless”
The early impressions of some users about the Gemini mobile assistant are quite disappointing.
One disgruntled user wrote on Reddit that the Gemini assistant provides long and unhelpful responses where not needed, like getting navigation.
“So like usual I asked the Google Assistant to navigate me home and then I found out it’s Gemini who responded to me and didn’t even work right, just a lot of stuff on the screen and you have to hit the screen to transfer you to Google maps,” the user said. “It’s useless.”
A lot of people also complained that Gemini somehow became their default assistant, which stopped some routine functions on their phones that previously ran with Google Assistant.
“I had the same thing happen yesterday. When Gemini became available I installed it, but then realized it removes a lot of functionality (like assistant routines triggered by my alarm), so I uninstalled it.
“Then this morning my alarm went off, but my routine didn’t run. I looked and somehow Gemini had been installed and set as the default. I had to go into settings and manually change back to assistant,” another user wrote.
Another user complained of not being able to make basic requests like asking for time with Gemini assistant when their lock screen is on.
Will Gemini Replace Google Assistant?
Saying that Gemini will replace Google Assistant would be a losing argument at this stage because the AI assistant is apparently not ready, the reason being that it currently cannot perform all the functions that Google Assistant can do. However, that does not mean it’s not possible in the near future.
Google itself has said that Gemini is still learning and evolving, meaning there could be improved versions of it. But does Google actually intend to cripple Google Assistant for Gemini? Only time can answer this.
At least, at this point, Gemini and Google Assistant are intended to work together within the Gemini mobile app, according to Google Support.
“Gemini is still learning, so Google Assistant will help power some familiar quick voice action features,” says Google.
Your Gemini mobile app presently gets help from Google Assistant for some familiar quick voice action features. But what happens when it eventually learns to perform these features independently?
