Gemini Nano is Google’s AI assistant for Android smartphones. Gemini Stay is a variant of Gemini Nano that allows you to maintain conversations with the assistant as a substitute of simply submitting prompts. To make use of Gemini Stay, you will want to pay the Gemini Superior subscription of $20 per thirty days through your Google account. You possibly can solely converse with it in English for the time being.
I bumped into loads of hassle writing this text. I used to be requested to put in writing one thing about Gemini Stay as a result of everybody’s speaking about it. Truthfully, it is as if I used to be requested to put in writing an essay concerning the impression of smartphones’ flashlight operate on the consumer expertise of 18 to 24 year-olds dwelling in France since 2011. In different phrases, there’s not a lot to say.
Pure conversations
The principle benefit of Gemini Stay is how one can interrupt the AI because it speaks. The concept is to debate and brainstorm ideas, concepts, opinions, or themes in a pure method. Gemini Stay can not but work together with different functions or with the content material in your display not like Gemini Nano.
There’s nearly no delay between the second you ask Gemini Stay a query and the second the AI solutions. The truth that you may interrupt it makes discussions extra intuitive. It is easy to right a question or just probe a query additional, even when it means altering the topic if the reply is not passable.
In the identical session, Gemini Stay will recall sure factors from a previous dialogue for those who ask it. You will discover a written document of your periods within the Gemini software, and in its response, the AI all the time paraphrases your query/reply. This roundabout method of repeating what you’ve got simply mentioned ensures that the AI has understood your request.
Gemini Stay does this slightly unobtrusively. Nonetheless, I typically acquired the impression that I’d simply given the AI a tough time, and it was simply making an attempt to purchase time to work on an improvised reply.
A typically poisonous relationship
Gemini Stay handles interruptions fairly properly. The AI by no means will get offended, even when it typically has the annoying tendency to maintain on speaking or just apologize proper once you’re about to talk. It is not solely infuriating but additionally very annoying.
I opted for a feminine voice and listening to Gemini apologize for my rudeness makes me really feel like I am in an abusive relationship. It’s paying homage to Joaquin Phoenix being a poisonous masculinist in addition to an incel within the film Her.
The dynamism of our conversations additionally proved to be an obstacle at occasions. I usually needed to pause Gemini whereas I sorted my ideas. It is because for those who hesitate for too lengthy or take too lengthy a pause, Gemini Stay will use the chance to interrupt you.
I typically had the impression that the AI was telling me what it thought I wished to listen to. For instance, primarily based on our previous interactions, I requested it to inform me what it considered my character. At first, she showered me with compliments. I needed to insist and go over it twice earlier than Gemini Stay revealed what my perceived shortcomings are. It actually was quite a bit like gaslighting.
All this blah, blah, blah, however what is the level?
Total, Gemini Stay left me with a reasonably good impression. As an idea, Google’s conversational AI labored as anticipated. However what is the level?
For the second (and in my view), it’s all for nothing. I discovered Gemini Nano far more fascinating, for example. I talked about it in additional element in my Pixel 9 Professional XL evaluation. Nonetheless, Gemini Nano can work together with the content material displayed in your display. You possibly can launch prompts — written or spoken — contextually once you’re watching a video on YouTube or studying an article in your browser. It is actually useful. Gemini Nano also can carry out actions throughout a number of Google functions.
Gemini Stay is incapable of all this for the time being. Google guarantees this can change in a couple of weeks if not months. For his or her sake, I hope so, as a result of that may give Gemini Stay an entire new sense of relevance.
I additionally discovered Gemini Stay’s solutions to be slightly generic and obscure. I had the fixed impression of getting to steer the dialogue. Moreover, I did not really feel there was sufficient reciprocity and in the long term, it wore me down. This was particularly stark once I spent a number of minutes clarifying my request, progressively including extra particulars and components. I’ve all the time been disenchanted by the shortage of added worth Gemini Stay dropped at our verbal exchanges.
Gemini Stay spoke very naturally, that is for positive. Nonetheless, the AI lacks character. There are ten completely different voices to select from. Every voice is accompanied by an outline indicating its tone and timbre. I might have preferred the distinction in tone between a “calm” and a “committed” voice to have been extra noticeable.
Above all, I might have beloved it if the content material or type of the discussions additionally assorted in accordance with the chosen voice. Other than intonation, I did not discover any sufficiently evident variations. The AI certainly wants extra time to coach and develop an actual character. By introducing variations within the solutions given in accordance with the “personality” of the voice, issues might be higher. Nonetheless, this isn’t an “objective” flaw in Gemini Stay.
Gemini Stay and the hype
Throughout my analysis, I got here throughout the idea of the “hype cycle” or Gartner hype cycle. This mannequin, proposed by the American consulting agency Gartner, takes the type of a curve describing the evolution of hype, or curiosity, in a brand new know-how.
This evolution could be damaged down into 5 phases. The preliminary success of a know-how launch generates excessive public expectations. These expectations change into unrealistic and over-inflated over time. The know-how inevitably fails to stay as much as these expectations. After this hype peak, we see a fall into an abyss of disillusionment. Everybody realizes by now the hype was exaggerated.
We change into extra reasonable. Some gamers persist, proposing new, extra rational iterations of the know-how. The slope slowly climbs again up, and at last arrive at a plateau of productiveness. The know-how has run its course by then, fulfilling its operate and the calls for/wants of the general public.
Gemini Stay is at the moment on the peak of the hype. Inevitably, it is going to have to come back again down and take a few of the disappointment I described within the earlier a part of this text.
I additionally assume that Google appears decided to climb again up the slope to achieve that well-known productiveness plateau. What it’s proposing with Gemini Nano already appears (to me) to be heading on this (good) path, and competitors from Apple Intelligence can solely reinforce extra momentum within the AI race.
The day Gemini Stay can establish the time and place of an appointment from a textual content message and create an occasion in my calendar, Google may have transformed me to its AI assistant.
What do you consider Gemini Stay? Have you ever had an opportunity to check out Google’s conversational AI?