Frankly, it feels premature. Gemini still can’t handle all the basic, task-oriented stuff that Assistant excels (or at least excelled) at. And the generative-AI elements it adds into the equation — generating (awkward and robotic) text, creating (mostly creepy-looking) images, summarizing text (with varying amounts of accuracy), and so on — just aren’t all that pertinent to the Android assistant environment. That’s to say nothing of the very real questions that still linger around the quality, accuracy, and originality of the information the service serves us.
Plus, you can access all those same generative-AI elements in so many other places now — including, increasingly, within most Google Android apps — that having ’em built into your assistant seems superfluous and unnecessary. So ultimately, we’re gaining very little while losing a lot.
Now, look: I certainly get why Google wants to position Gemini as the exciting new must-have tech advancement that’s changing the face of Android and its Pixel devices. I’m just not sure the tool itself is up to that task yet. And I’m not entirely convinced it ever will be.