Google | Free
- Powerful AI-driven personal assistant
- Hold natural conversations
- Great Google app integration
- Can’t control your iPhone like Siri
Google Gemini, like Siri, is a digital personal assistant that can help with your everyday queries using voice commands. This statement is both completely true and also utterly misleading.
It’s somewhat akin to saying that the iPhone 16 Pro, like the Nokia 3210, is a cell phone. That’s not to imply that Google Gemini (now in version 2.0) is unimpeachably brilliant in this new iOS app form, nor that it warrants ditching Siri altogether. It’s just that this advanced AI tool is operating on a completely different level to Apple’s creaky assistant, even now that Siri can pull more useful results from ChatGPT.
Gemini’s pleasingly sparse front end
Here’s a very basic example that gives some small indication as to the difference in intelligence. Ask both Siri and Gemini when Jimi Hendrix was born, and both will give you the correct date. However, with Gemini, you can then follow up with a simple “where?” or even “why was he special?”
It’s way more contextually aware than Siri, recognizing where a question falls in relation to previous queries. It’ll respond accurately and in a spookily natural conversational tone, too. Indeed, one of the most impressive tools that comes with this Gemini app is Gemini Live. Tap this button and you’re entered into a full back and forth exchange with Google’s AI assistant.
Context is key to Gemini’s appeal
I was able to conduct a full conversation with Gemini about local art gallery options in my city, and it was genuinely like talking to real person. After asking what kind of art I wanted to see, it reeled off some local options and offered to tell me opening times.
I replied “No that’s OK. Are there any good lunch spots nearby?”. Without missing a beat, Gemini reeled off an accurate recommendation for “a great taco place” in the vicinity of one of the art galleries.
The seamlessly conversational Gemini Live
iPhone users won’t want to drop Siri entirely, however. Gemini might be way smarter than Siri, but it doesn’t have the same level of privileged access to your phone.
You can’t ask Gemini to turn down your phone’s brightness, control your Apple devices, send a text message, or access any other apps – aside from Google ones, that is. If you’re heavily invested in the Google ecosystem on iOS (YouTube Music, Google Maps, Keep etc.), Gemini will interact with all of them with the appropriate prompt.
Gemini can call upon Google apps
There’ll always be that extra special sauce on top of such queries, too. When asking for directions to Buckingham Palace, Gemini offered up links to open up a route in Google Maps, but it also gave brief tour guide-like tips on access times.
Vocal and text-based entry will likely be your main point of interaction with Gemini, but it also lets you take pictures and conduct powerful visual web searches. When I took a picture of my TV remote control and asked “where can I buy this?”, Gemini recognised the object and pulled up a viable replacement, along with various retail links.
Image search is full integrated
In short, believe the hype. Google Gemini is as smart and seamless as they say, though it’s not quite time to retire Siri just yet. Although with rumors of Gemini integration into a future version of iOS, Siri’s days may be numbered…