• Last night Google revealed its latest lineup of smartphones with the Pixel 9 series.
• The company also showcased its AI-powered Gemini platform running on the new hardware.
• Google has opted to drop its Assistant functionality in favour of Gemini for the latest devices.

Last night Google held its annual Made by Google event showcasing the latest smartphone hardware it has been developing in the form of the Pixel 9 series. While there are four new devices as part of the lineup, at the time of writing, none are expected to launch in South Africa in an official capacity.

What may be available in South Africa, however, is on the software side of things, and in particular Gemini. Over the past year Google has been frantically working to get its generative AI platform into the hands of as many companies and users as possible, and the latest channel to do so will be the Pixel 9 series.

This as the new lineup of phones will not feature Google Assistant, which has been the company’s go-to digital assistant for a number of years now, and instead bring Gemini to the fore as its native solution.

“On mobile, Gemini is an evolution of the Assistant. Users can go back to the classic Google Assistant, but this is the new Assistant now,” Sissie Hsiao, Google’s VP and GM of Gemini Experiences, told Engadget in an interview.

“Now with generative AI, we can provide a whole new type of help for complex tasks that can save you hours. With Gemini, we’re reimagining what it means for a personal assistant to be truly helpful. Gemini is evolving to provide AI-powered mobile assistance that will offer a new level of help — all while being more natural, conversational and intuitive,” added Hsiao in a blog post.

Unpacking how on-device Gemini will differ from Google Assistant, Hsiao framed it as being an evolution of the experience.

“It’s much more powerful, even for the things that people used to do in the old Assistant,. It’s really a huge generative AI evolution of that product. It can do all the generative AI things like image generation and text generation, but it can also do all the things of the past in this much richer, much more fluid way,” she explained to Engadget.

While this is seemingly a significant announcement from Google’s perspective, for the end user this is only one of the first steps being taken in this generative AI journey.

To that end, it is unclear how this version of Gemini running natively on Pixel 9 phones will differ from the version available as an option to switch to within the current version of Google Assistant, or the dedicated Gemini apps that exist for both iOS and Android.

From what Google is saying it looks to be a more well-rounded experience. The additional rollout of other features like Gemini Live within the Advanced tier of Google’s genAI platform, could also have a part to play here.

Gemini Live was teased at Google’s I/O conference in May and is described as a “mobile conversational experience that lets you have free-flowing conversations with Gemini.”

“Want to brainstorm potential jobs that are well-suited to your skillset or degree? Go Live with Gemini and ask about them. You can even interrupt mid-response to dive deeper on a particular point, or pause a conversation and come back to it later. It’s like having a sidekick in your pocket who you can chat with about new ideas or practice with for an important conversation,” adds Google.

There is also some Gemini-powered functionality arriving in other applications soon, according to the tech giant. For example, “We’re launching new extensions in the coming weeks, including Keep, Tasks, Utilities and expanded features on YouTube Music,” the Google executive confirmed.

“Let’s say you’re hosting a dinner party: Have Gemini dig out that lasagna recipe Jenny sent you in your Gmail, and ask it to add the ingredients to your shopping list in Keep. And since your guests are your college friends, ask Gemini to ‘make a playlist of songs that remind me of the late ‘90s.’ Without needing too many details, Gemini gets the gist of what you want and delivers,” added Hsiao.

With Apple Intelligence delayed in terms of its previously communicated release, it looks like Google and Apple will once again be duking it out in terms of software, much like it did with Siri and Assistant a few years ago.