If you’ve ever played the Halo video games, then you know about Master Chief’s partner AI, Cortana (yes, that’s where Microsoft got the name from). Or, if you’ve watched the movie Her, from 2013, you’ll know the movie centered around AI that was so real that people formed relationships with it. But that’s just the stuff of fiction, right?
As much as we’ve had things like Google Assistant, Siri, and Cortana, those didn’t embrace the science-fiction definition of AI enough—they weren’t really marketed as that. Now, with Gemini Live being available to everybody straight from the Gemini app, that reality might be here.
You Can Try Gemini Live Right Away, As Long As You Have The Gemini App Installed
Gemini Live was made official at the launch event for the Google Pixel 9 devices, and even though it wasn’t the first implementation of its type (OpenAI did something similar not too long before that), it was still pretty cool to watch work. At the time, you could only use it if you paid for Gemini Advanced, which severely limited how many people would be able to give the feature a shot.
Well, right now, as long as you’ve got an Android smartphone and the Google Gemini app installed, you’ll be able to give Gemini Live a shot. Yep, that’s right, you don’t need to bother about having a subscription as Google has made it available for all users, though at the moment, the service is only available in English. Other languages will very likely find their way in due time.
I’ve been able to check it out, and yep, the feature is now available for me in the Gemini app and it works exactly as intended. I’m certainly going to try it out a lot more to see whether it’ll just be novel for some time or whether it’s going to have persisting usefulness for me.
What Makes Gemini Live So Special? Why Not Just Use Regular Gemini?
You can send in requests to the regular model of Google Gemini by using your voice, though its reply will be in text form. If all you’re after is the information itself, then that might be sufficient for you and there’s no reason whatsoever for you to bother figuring out what Gemini Live is. However, if you want a more “human” experience when having your requests answered, that’s where Gemini Live comes in.
Gemini Live is basically Google Gemini wearing the closest it can get to a human skin. It is able to listen to you the way a human would, remembering the context of your conversations. However, the real magic comes when it actually responds to you. Its responses come in the form of an eerily natural-sounding voice that even incorporates filler words like “umm” and natural pauses in the speech.
I’m sure after speaking to Gemini Live for a few minutes, it could be relatively easy to forget that you’re talking to lines of code and not an actual person. The fact that there are so many voice types to choose from helps with the realism.
Since it costs nothing to try out, give it a go. You can download Google Gemini from the Play Store.
