Stephen Schenck / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Gemini in Home is picking up a number of upgrades, with many focused on its ability to understand your voice commands.
- Users who work with notes and lists will appreciate support for more complex instructions, including multi-step tasks.
- Google’s also enhancing Parental Controls & Digital Wellbeing, letting Home users easily set limits.
Gemini replacing Assistant has been a learning process for all of us involved, but the good news is that it’s getting better all the time. In the latest series of updates that Google shares is on the way, we’re learning about a whole bunch of Gemini-related tweaks, and the big take-away here for you should be that Google’s focused on improving Gemini ability to understand both what you’re saying, and what you want it to do.
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Ever ask Gemini something dead simple and have it take forever to give you an answer? If you’re used to asking your smart speakers stuff like what time it is, Google says those responses should now come a lot quicker. On the flip side, Gemini’s also supposed to start recognizing your speech patterns, so if it’s you who’s exceptionally long-winded, expect Gemini to get better at waiting for you to finish before it interrupts.
Context has always been important to Gemini, and Home is working to better incorporate contextual cues, understanding which devices you’re trying to control, even when not named explicitly. A similar upgrade is coming to how Gemini handles notes and lists, with better understanding of instructions for updating lists, including complex multi-step commands. And in case you ever had Gemini glitch out and pretend like it can’t find a list of yours, don’t worry — Google says it’s fixed that, too.
Stephen Schenck / Android Authority
If you’re anything like us, you have way too many playlists put together — and good luck remembering what they’re all named. Thankfully, Gemini is getting better at recognizing those even if you stumble over a few words. We should also expect fewer mistakes when asking it to play specific songs — plus getting better at actually stopping the music when you ask it to.
On the app side of Google Home, Google’s making some tweaks to the thermostat slider that it says professional installers should appreciate, and it’s got a couple fixes for camera controls in the iOS version. The big one here, though, is the ability to set things like content filters, screen time limits, and usage rules for supervised accounts, guests, and other Home users in the app.
All these changes should be rolling our presently for Gemini for Home users.
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