In the AI chatbot world, ubiquity is everything. Companies have raced to build desktop and mobile apps for their bots, in order to both give them new capabilities but also to make sure they’re right in front of your face as often as possible.
There’s no better example of that than Google’s new Gemini app for iPhone, which quietly hit the App Store around the world this week. The free app is simple and straightforward: it’s just a chat window and a list of your previous chats. You can query the bot with text, voice, or your camera, and it’ll give you answers. It’s effectively identical to the Gemini section of the Google app, or what you’d get by opening a browser and going to the Gemini website.
The Gemini app does have one newish feature: access to Gemini Live, the bot’s more interactive and conversational chat mode that is similar to ChatGPT’s voice mode. Gemini Live has been available on Android for a few weeks, but this is the first place it has been usable for iPhone owners. In my short tests so far it works really well, and when you’re using Live it shows up both in the iPhone’s Dynamic Island and on your lockscreen.
But Live will eventually be everywhere. Whenever the next version of Gemini comes out, that will be too. The whole point of the Gemini app is to put the icon on your homescreen, and give you something to assign to the Action Button or one of the other quick-access spots on your phone. With one tap and half a second, you can be chatting with the bot. That access, and the muscle memory it helps build, are crucial for any company that wants users to make a habit out of chatting with bots.
Like all the other non-Siri chatbots, Gemini has some big limitations on your phone. It can’t change settings or access other apps. But it can access other Google apps, which continues to be Gemini’s big advantage. You can ask Gemini to play music, and it’ll fire up YouTube Music. You can ask it for directions and it’ll send you to Google Maps. It’s a tiny glimpse of what Gemini hopes to be on Android, and what Apple’s trying to do with Siri: use AI to make everything on your phone a littler more interactive and accessible. But none of that matters if people don’t use the bots — and so the race for your homescreen is on.
