First, there were voice digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. Then came online chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard. Now, the two are merging.
On Thursday (7), Google introduced Gemini, a smartphone app that acts as both a voice digital assistant and a conversational chatbot. Responding to voice and text requests, it can answer questions, write poetry, generate images, draft emails, analyze personal photos, and perform other actions, such as setting a timer or making a call.
Available for English speakers in over 150 countries and territories, including the United States, Gemini replaces Bard and Google Assistant. It is powered by the artificial intelligence technology that the company has been developing since early last year.
The new app is designed to perform a range of tasks, including serving as a personal tutor, assisting computer programmers with coding tasks, and even preparing job candidates for interviews, Google said.
When ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI in late 2022, impressing the public with how it answered questions, drafted theses, and performed computer programming, Google faced the need to update. Like other tech giants, the company spent years developing similar technology but failed to launch a product as advanced as ChatGPT.
Google eventually launched its own chatbot, Bard, in March. In the weeks that followed, the company merged its two main AI systems: Google Brain and DeepMind – and announced that the combined lab was developing new AI features, a technology called Gemini.
The Details
On Android, Gemini will be the app itself and may replace Google Assistant as the main voice assistant. On iOS, Gemini is a tab in the Google app.
Google is adding a paid version of the chatbot – Gemini Advanced – which will become part of a new $20 monthly subscription to the company’s Google One subscription family. The subscription will offer access to Google’s next-generation Gemini Ultra model and include 2 TB of cloud storage.
With the paid version, Google is directly competing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus and Microsoft’s Copilot Pro.
Source: The New York Times and Axios