5 features that you just can’t miss on Gemini

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has become the favourite of every technology company. With the overnight success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s vault to become the most valuable tech company on the back of OpenAI partnership, Google had to strike back and its answer came in the form of Gemini. Simply put, Gemini is a chatbot that replaces Google’s previous chatbot named Bard. Yes, it may all seem a bit confusing, but here is everything you need to know about Gemini and its top five features.

Google Gemini: Everything you need to know

Like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini is also a chatbot that is designed to answer your questions with more context than possible in a search engine. It can essentially organise or summarise text as well as write new text. For example, you can ask Gemini AI to write this article or write a thesis, and since it is multimodal, it accepts prompts in text, images, audio, and video. It is made possible by Gemini, a large language model (LLM) developed by DeepMind, an AI company Google bought in 2014.

It would be a disservice to the technology if we call Gemini a chatbot. It is both a GenAI chatbot as well as a large language model. For anything and everything Google does in the realm of AI, Gemini will serve as the backbone. At the time of its initial launch in December 2023, Google offered three different models of Gemini: a lightweight Android-friendly model called Nano, an everyday model called Pro, and an enterprise-oriented model called Ultra.

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At its annual developer conference, Google I/O, in May 2024, Google introduced Gemini 1.5 Pro as a “mid-sized multimodal model” and there is also Gemini 1.5 Flash, which Google debuted as a faster version of Gemini for developers. In a nutshell, there is Gemini Nano, Flash, Pro, and Ultra but the nuance doesn’t stop there.

How to download the Gemini app

The easiest way to use Google’s Gemini AI is through the chatbot’s dedicated website. If you are an Android user then Google has a dedicated app for Gemini, which you can download from the Play Store by clicking on this link. The Android app became available only recently in India and there are reports that not every Android phone lets you install the Gemini AI app.

What about iPhones? Google is not offering a dedicated Gemini app on the Apple App Store but it has instead redesigned the Google app with Gemini integration. Within the Google app on iPhone, you can switch between Google Search and Gemini based on your requirements. It seems like a better implementation than a dedicated app for Google’s AI assistant.

5 features of Google's Gemini

Now that you know what Google’s Gemini AI assistant is and how to use it across the web, Android, and iOS, here is a look at 5 key features of Gemini AI or what you can do right now with the AI assistant.

1. Reasoning and explanation

The biggest feature or use of Gemini AI comes in the form of its ability to reason and explain. Unlike a search engine which only shares links in response to a question, Gemini AI is designed to answer the same question with reason and explanation. In other words, it turns a complex task into a conversation by pulling in information from several sources.

It is also designed to remember the context of your queries to further refine its answers. If Google Search was great at telling what the weather was then Gemini AI would not only tell you the weather but also what activities you can plan in that weather or narrow the response to your want.

2. Multimodality

One of the common ways to interact with an AI chatbot is to type your queries but Gemini AI is designed to be multimodal. It means the AI chatbot can understand questions by text, photo, and even video. For instance, you can take a photo of your holiday packing list and the location you are heading to and ask Gemini AI if you are missing anything. Gemini also connects with Google’s other apps, meaning information can not only be pulled from other apps but also exported to Google’s other applications like Maps or Google Docs.

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3. Read your emails out loud

Since Gemini connects with your other Google services, it can read your emails for you. If that doesn’t sound exciting enough then Gemini can converse with you based on that email. So, you can ask specific questions about your mail or summarise the most important emails from your inbox.

4. Identify products and objects

One of the most useful features of Gemini AI is its ability to identify products and objects. You can launch Gemini on Android or iOS, click on the photo button, snap a photo and then ask Gemini to identify a product or object in the photo. For example, you can Gemini to identify a beverage and it will not only identify the drink but also provide ingredients and caffeine contents. While Google Lens has had this feature for a while, Gemini AI takes it a step further.

5. Coding

Gemini AI also excels at coding tasks including the ability to translate code between languages. You can use Google’s AI assistant to convert code written in one language to another. It can also be used to generate different coding solutions for the same problem or fill in the missing parts of a code or debug existing errors.

While Gemini can be used for everything from multimodal storytelling to personalised search, it is far from perfect. There were times when AI summaries from Gemini recommended users eat rocks and put glue on their pizza, and unlike ChatGPT, there are no footnotes with links to where the answers are sourced from.

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Gemini’s image generation feature to create images of people failed and it is yet to bring the feature back. Gemini AI and other AI chatbots are proving very useful but they are also ridden with hallucinations and it is thus important that users double-check the information rather than taking it at face value.