The Assistant experience on mobile is upgrading to Gemini
blog.google
Over the coming months, we’ll be upgrading users on mobile devices from Google Assistant to Gemini.

We’re upgrading Google Assistant users on mobile to Gemini, offering a new kind of help only possible with the power of AI.

    • Match!!@pawb.socialEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      If you still have Google Assistant, it will tell you it can’t set an alarm, and then tell you to try setting an alarm using Google Assistant

  • werefreeatlast@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    5 days ago

    Translation: your phone runs fine right now… Well not anymore! Introducing more Bloatware! Your phone has never crawled like this before.

  • FireWire400@lemmy.worldEnglish
    311·
    6 days ago

    Gemini is hardly an uprade to Assistant, though. Gemini can’t do any task automation (aka the one thing Google Assistant could do) because it’s a LLM that most likely doesn’t even ‘know’ that it’s being run on a phone…

    • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pubEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      Yes. This is why I’ve disabled it repeatedly when it supplants my assistant.

      If they remove automation, well, that was the one thing standing between me and de-googling.

      • FireWire400@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        5 days ago

        I don’t know if they can really do that since Gemini is just an LLM at its core. Maybe they could integrate Assistant functionality into Gemini on Android that’s then triggered by certain keywords, but at that point why not just keep both Assistant and Gemini?

  • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    26·
    7 days ago

    I find Gemini has better communication and comprehension ability compared with assistant, but can do even less when it comes to controlling the phone. No reminders, no calendar events, no messages, no integration with anything. Just talking.

    I would have preferred assistant talk and understand better, instead of a completly gimped alternative that does that and nothing more.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      13·
      6 days ago

      Exactly, and maybe I’m a outlier, but I have no intention of speaking to my device like it’s a human. Ever.

      • Griff@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        Same. I’d say the enshittification of devices has gone far enough.

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      7 days ago

      Integrations with the phone’s functionality is key. I don’t care how clever the brain is, it needs to talk to the rest of the body.

        • HiTekRedNek@lemm.eeEnglish
          12·
          6 days ago

          Set or change alarms, add reminders to your calendar, ask about those things, send text messages, start phone calls, have it read out last text messages received.

          When I was a truck driver, my wife could test me, and I could just listen to a transcript of what she sent instead of calling her and asking what she typed.

          “Hey Google, read my last text”

          “Hey Google, send a text to <wife>, 'Quit texting me while I’m driving, woman!” Stuff like that. 🤣

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          6·
          6 days ago

          I use it to set reminders and alarms. I don’t keep the “OK google” stuff on, I just hold the power button for a second or two until the assistant pops up (or at least used to, I haven’t done it in a while so I’m not sure if it’s stupid gemini now instead), then just say like, “remind me friday at 3pm to call the doctor” and it does it.

    • RBWells@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Google assistant was already a good listener, it seems to have gotten worse, but compared to anything else I’ve tried to do with voice it was & is still the best at understanding, and can be set to be bilingual.

      I honestly don’t understand this but it’s very Google to push the change before the replacement is fully baked. They did that with YouTube Music too.

  • astro_plane@lemm.eeEnglish
    28·
    6 days ago

    If this is pushed through a silent update then I’ll use adb to remove it. I don’t need a useless ai assistant hogging precious memory.

    I feel bad for for the folks who have their phone gimped overnight and they won’t have no clue why. So many people with older phones are going to need to upgrade because of this forced update. Talk about e-waste.

    • Routhinator@startrek.websiteEnglish
      7·
      6 days ago

      It probably already is. AICore is a service thats been getting snuck on the andoids for a couple of months, ever since AndroidSystemSafety was push on silently, which is effectively like recall and scans all your photos and files in the background.

      • astro_plane@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        Thanks for letting know about system safety, I just removed it. Play store said my xperia isn’t compatible with AICore so I got lucky with that. Wish I could switch to lineage buty bootloader is locked.

        Anything else I should remove?

  • eronth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    6 days ago

    Terrible idea. Every time I look at toggling it on just to test, it explicitly lists features that I use as ones which will be disabled by the switch.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    27·
    7 days ago

    I got the change and immediately put it back to Google assistant. I don’t want AI. I want to tell my phone when to set my alarm clock.

  • Squizzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    6 days ago

    I have no idea of the difference other than I feel slightly like a downgrade when I cant do simple things that Inused to be able to. The biggest difference isnlikely to be my privacy and data.

    Google on tap was all I needed and they have removed and it readded it multiple times…it is currently the only gemini feature I use. And its not a gemini feature.

  • sloppychops@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    Can we delete it?

    App Manager doesn’t seem able to remove all the google bloatware from my Flip6.

    Also, using Aurora and F-droid and still getting ‘download from Google play’ error message when trying to run certain apps. Any work around?