If you remember movies like Her or 2001: A Space Odyssey, the classic sci-fi visions of AI showed them responding quickly and having natural conversations just like humans. While ChatGPT and Google’s chat assistant have gotten very smart like Hal from 2001, they still couldn’t have real back-and-forth talks. That is changing now as Gemini Live starts becoming available on phones.
At its recent Pixel phone event, Google showed that the newest version of its chat assistant can now reply instantly. This allows you to have natural back-and-forth chats with it using your voice. You get to pick between 10 voice options that all sound very natural. Best of all, if the assistant is talking and you want to ask something else, you can break in – just like a real conversation!
Google said this new real-time chatting would begin that very day. But with Google, new things often only reach a small number of people at first before becoming more widely available later on. While that may still happen, Gemini Live seems to be spreading fast. It has already appeared on multiple phones including Pixel and Samsung devices just this morning.
To try out the real-time chatting yourself, you need the Google Assistant app on your Android phone. You also need to pay $20 per month for Google One’s “AI Premium” subscription. If you have those things, keep an eye out – the assistant may invite you to enable the new “Live” chatting feature soon!
For now, tapping the new “Live” button brings up simple instructions. You pick a voice, and then you’re ready to start chatting and asking questions in real time. Best of all, it seems to be working on different phones like Pixel and Samsung Galaxies. So hopefully more people will get to experience conversational AI assistants just like in the movies – all thanks to Gemini Live!
