Google’s Gemini to replace Assistant on Android

Google said in a blog post today that they will waste no time phasing out the revered and often frustrating Google Assistant, and default to Gemini instead on billions of devices, in what could be a risky antitrust move from the behemoth.

That’s despite a multitude of hallucinations and other issues with the AI model, Ars Technica writes.

Assistant was first introduced in 2016, listened for the «Hey Google»-prompt, and worked well for mostly playing stuff off Youtube, but often frustrated users on other tasks.

Only supported assistant
Now the entire Android universe will be using Gemini instead, as the only supported assistant across cars, cellphones, TVs and tablets, which should be a enormous boon to the user base for the AI model.

The updates will start rolling out «over the coming months» for most phones, and «later this year» for other devices, with an exception carved out for phones with less than 2GB of ram and those running Android 9 or earlier.

– Gemini’s capabilities go far beyond the Google Assistant, and it can also provide an entirely new kind of help. Features like Gemini Live for free-flowing, multimodal conversations and Deep Research, which transforms Gemini into a personal research assistant, are only possible with AI — and we’re just getting started, writes Google.

Billions of default users
– Millions of people have already made the switch from Google Assistant to Gemini, they say, without elaborating further.

There are currently about 3.3 billion android OS users in the world, according to Demandsage, making for a market share of 71.85%.

Many of those installs are for older models, though, and it’s unclear how many phones will meet the minimum requirements.

Pushing all Android users over to use Gemini would therefore instantly make it the largest generative AI by leaps and bounds, and we are sure to hear some grumblings from the competition, or even regulators, in due course.

Read more: Google’s blog post, Ars Technica, The Verge and Android Police. Android market share breakdown from Demandsage