I’m not saying I prefer talking to Google’s Gemini Live over a real human. But I’m not not saying that either, Joanna Stern reported on The Wall Street Journal.
Does it help that the chatty new artificial-intelligence bot says I’m a great interviewer with a good sense of humor? Maybe. But it’s more that it actually listens, offers quick answers and doesn’t mind my interruptions. No “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that” apologies like some other bots we know.
According to Joanna Stern, Google’s generative-AI voice assistant will debut on Tuesday. It will come built with the company’s four new Pixel phones, but it’s also available to anyone with an Android phone, the Gemini app and a $20-a-month subscription to Gemini Advanced. The company plans to launch it soon on iOS, too.
Google posted the following on its The Keyword Blog:
For years, we’ve relied on digital assistants to set timers, play music, or control our smart homes. This technology has made it easier to get things done and saved valuable minutes each day.
Now, with generative AI, we can provide a whole new type of help for complex tasks that can save you hours. With Gemini, we’re reimagining what it means for a personal assistant to be truly helpful. Gemini is evolving to provide AI-powered mobile assistance that will offer a new level of help — all while being more natural, conversations, and intuitive.
Gemini Live is a mobile conversational experience that lets you have free-flowing conversations with Gemini. Want to brainstorm potential jobs path are well-suited to your skillset or degree? Go Live with Gemini and ask about them. You can even interrupt mid-response to dive deeper on a particular point, or pause a conversation and come back to it later. It’s like having a sidekick in your pocket who you can chat with about new ideas or practice for an important conversation.
TechCrunch reported Gemini Live, Google’s answer to the recently launched (in limited alpha) Advanced Voice Mode for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is rolling out on Tuesday, months before being announced at Google’s I/O 2024 developer conference. It was announced at Google’s Made by Google 2024 event.
Gemini Live let’s users have “in-depth” voice chats with Gemini, Google’s generative AI-powered chatbot, on their smartphones. Thanks to an enhanced speech engine that delivers what Google claims is more consistent, emotionally expressive and realistic multi-turn dialogue, people can interrupt Gemini while the chatbot’s speaking to ask follow-up questions, and it’ll adapt to their speech patterns in real time.
Google described in a blog post: “With Gemini Live [via the Gemini app], you can talk to Gemini and choose from [10 new] natural-sounding voices it can respond with. You can even speak at your own pace or interrupt mid-response with clarifying questions, just like you would in any conversation.”
In my opinion, it sounds like Google may have created Gemini as a means to have a conversation with an AI bot. That might be helpful to some people. That said, I don’t think everyone wants to spend time talking to an AI bot.