Google's Gemini AI has recently rolled out some impressive updates at the Made by Google event yesterday, and they’re hard to ignore. One of the mainstream features is Gemini Live, a version designed to provide natural, hands-free conversations with your device, it's nothing new though. It’s meant to make your digital interactions feel more like talking to a friend, with multiple voice options, just like the assistant. This new AI is also more deeply integrated into Android, offering smarter, context aware assistance and faster response times across various Google apps like Tasks, Keep and YouTube Music.

But before you get too excited like I did when I was watching the keynote, here’s a bit of a reality check, to enjoy Gemini Live, you’ll need to subscribe to Gemini Advanced, the paid version of Gemini. For those of us who’ve been enjoying the Google Assistant for free, this feels a bit like being told that the air we breathe is now subscription-based. Oh and during the live demo, Gemini failed twice before they had to switch devices and btw they were using Galaxy 24 Ultras, so this doesn't look good for both Google and Samsung.

So, Google, here’s the deal, if you keep putting basic features behind a paywall, I might just switch to the other side.

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