On Saturday, Google announced it would phase out its long-standing digital Assistant in favor of Gemini, its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant.

Google said it will gradually upgrade users from Google Assistant to Gemini over the coming months, with the classic Assistant set to be discontinued on most mobile devices later this year.

“Over the coming months, we’re upgrading more users on mobile devices from Google Assistant to Gemini; and later this year, the classic Google Assistant will no longer be accessible on most mobile devices or available for new downloads on mobile app stores,” the company said.

Here’s what to know about Google’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant, Gemini

Google Gemini, formerly known as Google Bard, is an advanced AI-powered chatbot developed by Google. Designed to generate human-like responses, Gemini can process and respond to text, image, and audio prompts. It’s capable of answering questions, generating written content, creating code, producing images, and handling a wide range of user requests. Gemini is integrated with Google’s suite of applications and services, providing users with convenient access to data from these tools.

The evolution of Google Gemini
Gemini represents the culmination of Google’s extensive efforts in artificial intelligence (AI). Google’s journey in AI began in 2011 with the creation of Google Brain, which has since spearheaded major advancements, including the invention of the transformer architecture in 2017—a breakthrough that powers most large language models (LLMs) today. In 2014, Google acquired DeepMind, the AI research lab that eventually developed the Gemini model.

The Gemini chatbot was introduced as Bard in March 2023. Initially powered by Google’s LaMDA LLM, it was later upgraded to the more capable PaLM LLM. In December 2023, Google launched the Gemini LLM, its most advanced model yet, and rebranded Bard to Gemini.

Gemini gives you direct access to Google AI. Get help with writing, planning, learning, and more.

How does Gemini work?

When you enter a prompt into Gemini, it replies with a response using the information it already knows or fetches from other sources, like other Google services.

Gemini relies on machine learning (ML) techniques, specifically LLMs and generative AI, to efficiently ingest and parse large volumes of data. Here’s an overview of how Google’s LLM innovations led to the development of Gemini.


Generative AI operates by training models on vast amounts of data. Data scientists and researchers train LLMs by mapping the relationships among words, phrases, and images in the training data, enabling the model to predict the meaning of prompts and generate appropriate responses. Each word in a sentence or pixel of an image represents a prediction.

To ensure responses meet users’ needs, generative AI models undergo a fine-tuning stage. During this phase, models are provided with additional specific data (such as conversation databases) and human feedback to refine their outputs.

LLMs like those powering Gemini use a transformer architecture, introduced by Google researchers in 2017. The transformer architecture revolutionized machine learning for several reasons:

Efficiency: Requires fewer computational resources

Contextual understanding: Models relationships between words in a sentence regardless of word order, assigning context and meaning

Parallel processing: Handles multiple words simultaneously, accelerating the training process

Versatility: Supports multiple input and output types, including text, images, and audio

Google offers free and paid versions of Gemini. You can access Gemini via a web application or iOS and Android apps.

The free version offers all of the basic features:

•Text-based prompts and generation

•Ability to upload and generate images

•Ability to search Google apps and services

The paid version, Gemini Advanced, offers more powerful features:

•Advanced version of the AI model, which is designed for more complex tasks

•Ability to have longer conversations

•Ability to use Gemini inside Google apps like Gmail and Docs
2 TB of storage

Google Gemini combines cutting-edge AI with the power of Google’s expansive ecosystem to provide a wide array of tools for productivity, creativity, and problem-solving. Whether you need help generating text, analyzing or creating images, writing code, brainstorming ideas, or conducting intelligent searches, Gemini adapts to your needs with remarkable flexibility. Below, we’ll explore how Gemini’s capabilities can assist with various tasks and enhance your workflow.

Text generation

Enter a prompt, and Gemini will respond with conversational text. You can generate text for various business, personal, academic, or creative applications.

Examples of text generation tasks include:

•Drafting content for emails, letters, and other forms of correspondence

•Creating educational content, such as speeches, study guides, presentations, and lesson plans

•Translating text from one language to another
Drafting business communications like proposals, website content, and memos

•Providing tips to revise or improve existing written content

•Writing creative content, such as social media posts, storylines for games, and prompts for journaling exercises

Image analysis

Gemini incorporates Google Lens capabilities so you can upload images and text prompts. You can use the image to add context to your prompt or direct Gemini to do something with it.

You can use the image analysis functionality to perform a variety of tasks, such as:

•Get a description of what’s in an image.

•Write a caption for an image in a particular style or at a particular length.

•Identify what’s pictured, like a specific flower or type of insect.

•Transcribe handwritten notes.

•Turn images of text, like your car’s vehicle identification number (VIN), into text.

One limitation of Gemini’s image features is that they don’t allow you to upload photos of people. This rule prevents people from using the platform to generate harmful images of others.

Image generation

Google Gemini can generate images based on your prompts. You can also ask Gemini to use a picture you upload as a reference or an inspiration. It’s capable of generating images in any style. For example, you can specify if you want your image to look photorealistic, abstract, hand-drawn, or like an oil painting.

Here are some ways you can use the image generation feature:

•Creating images for social media, presentations, and websites

•Drafting concept art for film, art, photography, or sculpture projects

•Adding illustrations to existing prose or poetry
Creating your own library of stock images

•Re-creating an existing image in a different style

  • Brainstorming ideas for decor

Code writing

Gemini can tnslate plain language instructions into code. It writes code in more than 20 programming languages.

Its coding capabilities include:

  • Finding bugs, syntax errors, and logic errors in existing code
  • Modernizing existing code
  • Explaining the functionality of a snippet of code
  • Creating documentation
  • Translating code between different programming languages

Brainstorming

Gemini can assist you in generating ideas for creative projects, activities, and marketing campaigns.

You can ask Gemini to help you brainstorm for many activities:

  • Ideas for fun games for a team-building, networking, or family event
  • Features and functionalities for a product or service
  • Layouts for visuals to accompany presentations, blog posts, or social media
  • Prompts to use during brainstorming sessions
  • Content for blogs, presentations, social media posts, and email campaigns
  • New activities or hobbies to try based on your current interests and skills

Searching the internet

Gemini’s ability to leverage Google’s search capabilities is one thing that sets it apart. These capabilities can be used to search directly from within the application or to perform more complex tasks.

For searching the internet, it’s important to note that Gemini doesn’t produce results like what you would see on a Google search page. Instead, it summarizes them.

Sometimes, Gemini’s responses include images with links. So if you search for “major holidays in Kenya,” Gemini may respond with a list of holidays and images of people celebrating them.

You can add Gemini to Google search pages with a web browser extension. With the extension, you get a summary of the search page results. You can also prompt Gemini to do things with your search results. For example, if you’re trying to decide which television to buy, Gemini can create a comparison table so you don’t have to hop between tabs.

Summarize text

Gemini can scan texts and summarize them for you. You can paste any text or URL into the chatbot.

You can use this feature to do the following:

  • Summarize an article with key points of interest for readers with a technical background.
  • Pull out the most important topics from a transcription of an interview.
  • Compare two articles with a high-level overview of them in an easy-to-read table.