The funny thing is there’s no reason for it to be so shitty just because they use Gemini for it. LLMs can use tools if given access. There’s no reason they can’t give it a tool to use intents to launch activities. I can run their own open weight Gemma model in llama.cpp and I’m pretty sure it can call tools.
Lately I feel like Google or Microsoft could pay me like a million a year and I could single-handedly fix their most broken products and the AI doesn’t even have to go. Teams? Don’t care how much tracking they put in it, it can be made more performant and the UI can be made usable. Gemini? Could legitimately be fixed to do everything the old Google assistant did and more. Outlook though? Yeah that one has to go. No saving it anymore.
Ah, I thought you meant as in tricking Gemini to use Assistant somehow. Yeah, that would be great. It’s insane they got rid of it at all but Google loves killing cool/useful shit.
Honestly, with all the salt I have about them, I’m worried about my kidneys. I had my gripes with Assistant and didn’t personally use it much, but for hands-free operation, for example listening and responding to text messages without having to look away from the road, it was really useful.
Recently, when my wife tried answering a message, her phone apparently just responded “You seem upset” and ended the conversation. I guess that was a self-fulfilling prophecy…
The funny thing is there’s no reason for it to be so shitty just because they use Gemini for it. LLMs can use tools if given access. There’s no reason they can’t give it a tool to use intents to launch activities. I can run their own open weight Gemma model in llama.cpp and I’m pretty sure it can call tools.
Lately I feel like Google or Microsoft could pay me like a million a year and I could single-handedly fix their most broken products and the AI doesn’t even have to go. Teams? Don’t care how much tracking they put in it, it can be made more performant and the UI can be made usable. Gemini? Could legitimately be fixed to do everything the old Google assistant did and more. Outlook though? Yeah that one has to go. No saving it anymore.
Add some keyword along the lines “Tell Google Assistant to…”
You can’t tell Google Assistant shit anymore, they killed it to force people to use Gemini, which is objectively terrible as an assistant.
I know, that’s why my suggestion for improving Gemini was that they should add an option to go back to Assistant.
Ah, I thought you meant as in tricking Gemini to use Assistant somehow. Yeah, that would be great. It’s insane they got rid of it at all but Google loves killing cool/useful shit.
I’m still salty about Photosphere.
Honestly, with all the salt I have about them, I’m worried about my kidneys. I had my gripes with Assistant and didn’t personally use it much, but for hands-free operation, for example listening and responding to text messages without having to look away from the road, it was really useful.
Recently, when my wife tried answering a message, her phone apparently just responded “You seem upset” and ended the conversation. I guess that was a self-fulfilling prophecy…