The overwhelming success of ChatGPT in late 2022 energized Google to launch a chatbot simply 4 months later. Gemini, named Bard on the time, has had a tumultuous journey since then, present process many upgrades and a whole rebrand.
Regardless of all the massive language mannequin (LLM) upgrades, from LaMDA to PaLM 2 to Gemini Professional, Google’s chatbot has failed to realize the recognition of its rivals. With the corporate’s annual developer occasion, Google I/O, across the nook, we will anticipate Google to roll out Gemini updates to make the chatbot extra interesting to the general public.
After monitoring the evolution of Gemini since its launch and testing many different generative AI chatbots, I’ve rounded up a number of the options I feel Google may carry to Gemini to considerably enhance the person expertise, making the software a extra worthy chatbot competitor.
1. A extra immersive Gemini expertise on iOS
The primary and most blatant win could be for Google to make Gemini extra attractive for iOS customers. Since its rebrand in February, Google has been positioning Gemini as an AI assistant able to going past what an unusual chatbot can do — and with Android telephones, it has finished simply that.
By downloading the Gemini app, Android customers can make the most of some neat integrations, comparable to accessing Gemini wherever they’d repeatedly use their Google Assistant, activating an overlay expertise that tells Gemini what’s on their display, and even accessing Google Assistant voice options, comparable to setting a timer on their telephone.
iOS customers, nonetheless, cannot obtain a devoted Gemini app; entry to the chatbot is proscribed to the Google app. It is a large missed alternative on condition that many Apple customers have Google as their default search engine. They might profit from experimenting with Gemini as an assistant, particularly with out an Apple AI chatbot native to the iOS expertise.
Microsoft Copilot is an efficient instance of what Google might be doing with Gemini. The Copilot app at the moment ranks #22 within the App Retailer’s Productiveness class. If Google desires to market Gemini as an on a regular basis AI assistant, iOS customers ought to get a standalone app.
2. Automated footnotes
If you happen to ask Gemini a query, the chatbot will reply with out footnotes or supply hyperlinks. With the intention to confirm the accuracy and validity of its solutions, Gemini affords a useful “double-check with Google” characteristic. The characteristic reveals customers the place elements of the solutions are sourced from. This additional step, nonetheless, requires an additional refresh, which may interrupt the person’s workflow.
Moreover, once you click on the “double-check with Google” button, Gemini would not record all of the sources. For elements of the response, the chatbot may say that Google Search did not discover related content material (see the screenshot beneath). This response undermines the reliability of the solutions and provides an additional layer of doubt when utilizing the chatbot.
Considered one of Gemini’s benefits is that, in contrast to ChatGPT, it’s related to the web. Google ought to capitalize on this performance and create options to construct belief with its viewers, together with clickable footnotes to supply content material with out an additional step, a characteristic that Copilot already affords.
3. Doc uploads
Gemini is already multimodal and helps the enter of voice and picture prompts along with textual content. As useful as these two options are, the flexibility to import paperwork may assist take the chatbot to the subsequent stage. Including this characteristic would unlock a brand new suite of prospects.
Anthropic’s Claude, for instance, lets customers import paperwork without spending a dime. This functionality is among the chatbot’s largest benefits as a result of it permits customers to work with supplies they work together with every day.
Whether or not you need a analysis paper summarized, a wordy contract defined, or have questions on a PDF you are utilizing, AI chatbots with document-reading capabilities might help.
Including this characteristic would additionally give Gemini a aggressive benefit over its largest rival, ChatGPT, which solely affords doc importing within the premium model of its chatbot, ChatGPT Plus, which prices $20 per 30 days.
4. Improved privateness controls
Customers obtain an ominous message once they open Gemini: “Your conversations are processed by human reviewers to enhance the applied sciences powering Gemini Apps. Do not enter something you would not need reviewed or used.”
While you click on to be taught extra in regards to the message, Gemini says: “If you don’t need future conversations reviewed or used to enhance machine studying fashions, flip off Gemini Apps Exercise.”
But once you go to that new window, you obtain a contradicting message: “Your chats are saved in your account for as much as 72 hours, whether or not Gemini Apps Exercise is on or off. Google makes use of this information to supply the service, preserve its security and safety, and course of any suggestions you select to supply.”
So, it looks like Google will save your chats and proceed to evaluate them till the 72-hour mark. Whereas it’s true that generative AI fashions get smarter by studying from person inputs, many AI chatbots permit customers to decide out of that characteristic completely, having no chats saved in any respect.
For instance, since April 2023, OpenAI has let customers decide out of getting ChatGPT use their information to coach its fashions or save chats. Simply this week, OpenAI up to date ChatGPT’s information controls even additional by including a Non permanent Chat choice for customers who would like to not have their chats saved to their chat historical past even when the mannequin enchancment is turned off.
Generative AI customers are usually extra conscious of their information privateness as a result of they do not need their info utilized in future solutions or shared with others. To encourage extra use of its chatbot, Google ought to deal with privateness considerations and add a clearer and all-encompassing opt-out choice.
5. Focus extra on Gemini than on forcing SGE
As I discussed firstly of this text, Google has been attempting lengthy and laborious to popularize its AI fashions. In consequence, the tech big has carried out a few of its generative AI choices in its hottest product, its search engine, by means of the Search Generative Expertise (SGE).
With SGE, customers get an AI-generated reply to their search engine immediate on the high of search outcomes. That is meant to supply fast, useful, conversational solutions that require much less scrolling. Nonetheless, public suggestions suggests the expertise is complicated and aggravating. Customers discover that SGE disrupts the common search circulate.
When Google first introduced SGE, it was accessible by means of Google’s Search Labs, the place customers must decide in to make use of the characteristic. Since then, nonetheless, many customers have reported seeing SGE seem of their search outcomes even when they hadn’t opted in.
In March 2024, Google confirmed through a press release to Search Engine Land {that a} “subset of queries, on a small proportion of search visitors within the US” would get SGE. This compelled publicity is leaving customers with a adverse opinion of Google’s AI tech.
The answer right here is easy. Google ought to concentrate on making its generative AI choices, like Gemini, extra attractive to customers, so that they need to take part, quite than forcing its AI options into a well-liked product, like Google Search.