GoKawiilis a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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Yesterday, I built my first Android app. Then, I made two more — three in one afternoon.
For one, I literally typed 148 words into my web browser and walked away. Ten minutes later, I had an entire new app on my actual Android phone. I did have to prep that phone by enabling a USB debugging mode and plugging it into my PC, but as advertised, Google’s AI Studio did literally everything else for me.
Then, I tried actually using my three apps: a calorie counter and two games. They were kind of bad. And just when I started to enjoy iterating on them, trying to make them better, AI Studio informed me I’d reached my daily limit. I’d have to pay or wait for more.
So yes, there’s still friction, but it’s impressive how much you can do. In one morning, my colleague Stevie Bonifield made a personal workout tracker they found good enough to actually use. Confronted with Gemini’s upsell, my first reaction was: “What if I try paying for a couple months?” I didn’t expect that from Google.
How Google’s AI Studio builds an Android app
On Tuesday, when Google showed off AI coding on a Doom-like game, we joked that I should make MOOD. It would be a Doom-like text adventure game: Modern Online Oratory Dungeon.
That was all Google needed to start. When I typed “Make me a Doom-like text adventure game called MOOD, where MOOD stands for Modern Online Oratory Dungeon” into AI Studio, Gemini began typing additional ideas itself, attempting to autocomplete my thought. To start, it typed the phrase “It should feature procedural generation of levels and challenging, turn based combat.”
Gemini attempts to autocomplete my app idea. Image: Google
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