Gemini has been a revelation of minute proportions in the AI landscape. On one hand, it shows that Google is going all-in on artificial intelligence, with thenext-gen multimodal AIbecoming a major part of Google’s identity. On the other hand, it’s just a rebranding ofGoogle Bard, and it still has many, many kinks that we’re still working through. Gemini will almost certainly replace the tried and true Google Assistant one day, butit’s not necessarily ready to completely replace itand take that next step yet. However, Google’s made micro strides to get there and has updated the way Maps navigation starts when asking Gemini for directions.
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When previously using Gemini as a digital assistant, asking it for directions would show you a card with short details regarding the route you were looking for. After showing the distance, the length of time it would take, and a map, the card included a link to the route’s directions. Pressing it would open Google Maps. This was undoubtedly an annoying quirk of looking up directions with Gemini, as a truly hands-free experience shouldn’t require you to have to click a link for those directions.
Using Gemini for hands-free directions is much more streamlined
This quirk is now gone with the latest version of Gemini on the Play Store, released on March 25 (via9to5Google). The applicable release note says that Google has “updated voice commands to include auto submit,” which means there’s “no need to hit the ‘send’ button anymore.” It works exactly as you’d assume, with asking for directions now taking you to Google Maps after a few moments of waiting.
It’s nice to see Google taking steps to improve the Gemini assistant experience, but it will take quite a while before we can fully recommend it over Google Assistant at this rate. If you use Gemini as the onboard smartphone assistant,it cannibalizes Google Assistant and disables it, so you have to choose between one or the other. If you do decide to use Gemini,understanding what it’s best at will be key to having the best experience with it. The overall Gemini experience extends past simple AI chatbots, too, but itsGoogle Messages implementation is now rolling out to some beta testers.
