Google Gemini

This post is part of my “Exploring the Landscape of AI Assistants” series — see all the assistants I’ve reviewed.

This week I explored, Gemini, an AI assistant from Google, on my iPhone. I will be comparing it with Anthropic’s Claude, X’s Grok and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which I recently examined.

Note:

You can explore the key user flows for ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude on Meeako

Threat to Google's Core Products

Around mid 2016, I remember reading an article stating that around 50% of product searches were starting on Amazon rather than Google. Similarly in 2022, a Google exec shared that, as per Google’s internal study, almost 40% of young people – when looking for a place for lunch – didn’t use Google Maps or Search. They went to TikTok or Instagram instead.

So, I can understand why the popularity of tools like ChatGPT can pose a threat to Google’s core products, such as Maps and Search.

Everyday AI Assistant

Google is pitching Gemini as an everyday AI assistant. I saw this push in action while exploring the app and it is also evident when we see how deeply Gemini is being integrated across Google’s products.

Getting Started

Gemini works only with Google accounts. At first, I was a bit surprised but then I realized that this may have to do with what we discussed above – Gemini’s integration with other products in Google ecosystem.

Hear the response

I have not seen this feature or anything similar in ChatGPT, Grok or Claude yet. Not sure if that is because Google sees the future of personal AI assistant as more hands-free and ambient, or if it’s way to showcase their capabilities given their dominance with Google Assistant

Images with AI label

I noticed images that Gemini creates has a label, “ai”, at the bottom right corner. I heard a lot of tech companies such as Meta and Google are moving or exploring similar practices, which help promote transparency, reduce misinformation and increase user awareness.

Political Illustrations

Compared to Grok, and ChatGP (note: Claude is text only assistant at the of time of writing), Gemini seems to be stringent when it comes to creating images of people.

Google Integration

At the time of writing, Gemini on iOS app only offers to integrate with Gmail and Google Docs. So far, I have not seen any such features on Grok, Claude or ChatGPT iOS apps. I feel this is a way for Google to keep the users in their ecosystem, plus also find additional use cases to build on.

Smart Tagging while Analyzing Documents

This is pretty neat — Gemini not only tags information but also highlights the relevant section of text.

Going Live

I like the flow of this feature – it welcomes the user in a very pleasant way both, visually and audibly. It then presents the Terms & Conditions in text, which user has to accept before proceeding.

Gemini Live - Audio

Nothing special here – it similar to others such as ChatGPT (see demo), Grok (see demo) or Claude (see demo)

Subscription Upgrade

I like that Gemini is very similar to Grok when it comes to nudging users to upgrade to paid plans – they both are not in your face with blasting “upgrade” call-to-action at top of the screen.