Samsung integration helps create AI assistant that beats Google's Gemini

One of the most important changes in Samsung's new phones It's simple: When you long press the side button on your phone, instead of activating Samsung's own Bixby assistant by default, you will get google gemini,

This is probably a good thing. Bixby was never a very good virtual assistant – Samsung originally created it primarily as a way to navigate device settings more easily, not to retrieve information from the Internet. It's improved since then and can now do standard assistant things like performing visual searches and setting timers, but it's never managed to catch up to the likes of Alexa, Google Assistant and now, even Siri. So, if you are a Samsung user, this is good news! Your assistant is probably better now. (And if, for some unknown reason, you really, really love Bixby, don't worry: There's still an app.)

The switch to Gemini is an even bigger deal for Google. A few years ago Google was brought under suspicion When ChatGPT launched But it has taken hold on a large scale. according to Recent reporting from wall street journalCEO Sundar Pichai now believes that Gemini has overtaken ChatGPT, and he wants Google to have 500 million users by the end of this year. It may be possible that only one Samsung phone gets there at a time.

Gemini is now a front-and-center feature on the world's most popular Android phones, and millions upon millions of people will likely start using it more — or using it at all — now that it's so accessible. For Google, that's essentially betting that Gemini is the future of every single one of its products, bringing in a hugely important new set of users and interactions. All that data makes Gemini better, which makes it more useful, which makes it more popular. Which makes it better again.

Right now, Google appears to be well ahead of its competitors in one important way: Gemini is the most capable virtual assistant on the market right now, and it's not particularly close. Not that Gemini is particularly great; It's just that it has access to more information and more users than anyone else. This race is still in its early stages, and No The AI ​​product is still great – but Google knows better than anyone that if you can be everywhere, you can get better really fast. It did such a good job with search that it Put Google in antitrust crisisThis time, at least so far, it looks like it will be even easier for Google to take over the market.

For years, there were three meaningful players in the virtual assistant field. Amazon's Alexa, Google's Assistant, and Apple's Siri all offered similar features and were equally accessible through speakers, phones, and wearable devices. But now? much publicized, AI-first “Remarkable Alexa” By all accounts, there have been massive delays and massively weakShipped with latest versions of Siri a wacky animation And there appears to be no new smartness or abilities.

Of course, there are other ascendant AI assistants, too. ChatGPIT, Cloud, Grok, and Copilot all have strong underlying models, and some share the same multimodel capabilities as Gemini. There are plenty of good reasons to choose them or even have such a thing as confusion over a Gemini. But they are missing the most important thing: delivery. These are apps that you have to download, log in, and open every time. Gemini is a button you can press – and that's a big difference. There's a reason OpenAI is reportedly at work on everything from a web browser to a Jony Ive-designed ChatGPT gadget: the built-in options usually win.

The built-in options are also the ones that have the best integration across platforms, which can be a whole ball game. Gemini can already change your phone's settings and, with the new upgrade, Can even work across apps -Taking information from your email and dumping it into a text message draft, to name just one example. Because of the way iOS and Android are designed, no other assistant has this kind of reach — and again, there's no sign that Siri will ever be as good as it needs to be. If the future of assistants is like this Agentic behavior using your apps for youGoogle's underlying advantage may be insurmountable.

Meanwhile, Google is practically spoiled for choice for places to put a Gemini. The company recently announced that all paying Workspace customers will get Gemini access. You can access Gemini with a single click from your Gmail inbox or summon it with a keystroke in Docs. And the underlying technology is even more extensive. You can use Gemini to find stuff on YouTube and Drive, and practically every time you search, a Gemini-powered AI overview appears at the top of your results. “Today, all seven of our products and platforms with more than two billion monthly users use the Gemini model,” Pichai said on Google's earnings call last fall. (Fun fact: The word “Gemini” appears 29 times in that earnings call transcript, just three fewer than “discovery.”)

However, when it comes to how people actually encounter these models and interact with them, phones are still the AI ​​device of choice. And this is where Google probably has the biggest advantage. “Gemini's deeper integration is improving Android,” Pichai said on that earnings call. “For example, Gemini Live lets you have free-flowing conversations with Geminis; People love it.” For now, smartphones are the most compelling AI devices, and Google can integrate its systems like no other. Apple, struggling to catch up with the iPhone, had to launch an awkward handoff with ChatGPT so Siri could answer more questions.

All of these assistants, including Gemini, still have a lot of limitations. They are lying; They misunderstand; They lack the integration needed to do even some of the basic things that Alexa and the Assistant have been able to do for years. Gemini models still sometimes do ridiculous, tacky things like tell people to eat stones and produce diverse founding fathers. But if you believe that the AI ​​age is coming, or perhaps has already arrived, there is nothing more important than getting your AI platform in front of users right now. People are developing new habits, learning new systems, developing new relationships with their virtual assistants. The stronger we become, the less likely we will be to abandon our AI friend for another.

ChatGPT got the first move and captured the world's attention by showing how engaging AI chatbots can be. But distribution is with Google. It can put its shiny icon in front of practically the entire population of the Internet every day, across a vast array of products, and get the kind of data and feedback it ultimately needs to do well. . Even as it's fighting in court over how powerful its default positioning has made it in search, Google is implementing the same playbook with AI. And it is working again.