Gemini on Android gets better and works with Gmail, Messages, YouTube and more

Google’s Gemini on Android, its AI replacement for Google Assistant, will soon benefit from its ability to deeply integrate with Android’s mobile operating system and Google’s apps. At the Google I/O 2024 developer conference on Tuesday, the company announced that users will be able to display the Gemini overlay on top of the app they’re using in several ways. It also updates Android’s built-in AI model, Gemini Nano.

Soon, Android users will be able to drag and drop AI-generated images directly into their Gmail, Google Messages and other apps. Meanwhile, YouTube users will be able to tap “Request this video” to find specific information from that YouTube video, Google says.

Those who pay for the upgraded version of Gemini Advanced will also have the option to use a “Request this PDF” option which will allow you to get answers from the document without having to read all the pages. Gemini Advanced subscribers pay $19.99 per month for access to AI and receive 2TB of storage plus other Google One benefits.

Already, Gemini on Android could do other things like generate captions on photos, ask questions about articles you read, and perform other generative AI tasks, similar to other AI chatbots. However, OpenAI overshadowed the Google event by announcing a GenAI model, GPT-4o (with the o meaning “omni”), which works with text, speech and video, including what the phone’s camera sees. So, despite Gemini’s inherent advantages, there will be some competition on mobile devices.

Google says Gemini’s latest features on Android will roll out to hundreds of millions of supported devices over the coming months. Over time, Gemini will evolve to also offer other suggestions related to what’s on your screen.

Meanwhile, the base model on Android device, Gemini Nano, will be upgraded to include multimodality. This means that it will be able to process text input as well as other means of processing information, including images, sounds and spoken language.

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