is a senior reviewer focused on smart home and connected tech, with over twenty years of experience. She has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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Google is rolling out its biggest smart home overhaul in years. Launching October 1st, Gemini For Home is a suite of new AI-powered features for Google’s smart home hardware and software.
The biggest change: Gemini is replacing Google Assistant on all of Google’s smart speakers, all the way back to the original Google Home speaker. This LLM-powered upgrade, announced at Google I/O, will be available through an Early Access program at first, with a wider rollout planned for next year.
On smart speakers, Gemini brings an entirely new voice assistant that uses and understands natural language, can interpret context, and can pull in more real-time information. You still activate it with the wake words “hey Google,” but Google Assistant has been evicted.
“Gemini for Home is the intelligence for your entire home,” Anish Kattukaran, head of product at Google Home and Nest, tells The Verge. “It’s not going to just replace Assistant on speakers and displays, but it’s going to upgrade your other devices as well, your cameras and doorbells, where you interact with those devices, and bring those smarts collectively to your entire home.”
With the new Google Home Premium subscription (formerly Nest Aware, and starting at $10 a month), some Nest smart speakers will get Gemini Live, Google’s more conversational chatbot. The subscription also adds Gemini intelligence features to your Nest camera and video doorbells, including the new models Google announced this week. The Google Home app is also getting a Gemini glow-up, in the form of a new chatbot, new automation features, and a new Home Brief that summarizes the events of the day. (Read more about all these here.)
On the new Google Home Speaker, the Gemini voice assistant uses different colors to indicate whether it’s listening, thinking, or responding. Image: Google
A smarter voice assistant
Gemini for Home is a ground-up overhaul of Google’s voice assistant in the home. It offers 10 new voices, more natural conversation, and the ability to understand context, and it can respond with more access to real-time information, according to Google.
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