Google Gemini: everything you need to know

By Patrick Hearn and Jasmine Mannan Updated October 30, 2025

With AI dominating the news cycle over and over again, it’s no surprise we continue to hear about Google’s AI companion, Gemini. It’s one of the more superior chatbots you can access, in more ways than one, with the ability to generate images and integrate the AI straight into your Google Workspace including Drive and Gmail.

Gemini has replaced Google Assistant for the most part and will see a full roll out before the end of the year. AI has changed drastically over the past few years with major advancements taking it from a structured chatbot with predetermined responses to a technology which has the ability to research and think.

Apps like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are popping up more often than not thanks to this. You’re able to use AI to do a range of tasks from creating your CV down to showing it your surroundings and asking which way you’re meant to go if you’re lost.

Understanding what Gemini is and what it can do might seem daunting, but it’s easier than you think. It can also greatly simplify specific day-to-day tasks and help you find answers to questions you didn’t even know you had, all without reading through pages and pages of articles. Here’s everything you need to know to not only start using Gemini, but make it work for you.

Prior to Gemini, we had Google Assistant – the voice you may have heard as part of Google’s smart home system, and later down the line built into phones.

Gemini is the evolution of Google Assistant. It’s what’s called a multimodal AI model, which means it can process data from multiple sources and “understand” all of that information in context. It can recognize images, listen to recordings, read written information and provide a breakdown of all of that in an easy-to-understand way. However, its more than just the AI model, with Gemini also being the name of the chatbot too.

The AI launched in December 2023 and slowly absorbed other Google projects. Google’s original chatbot, Bard, became Gemini itself and Duet AI, which was originally aimed at businesses, became Gemini for Workspace. You can also find Gemini on many phones, laptops, and more. It’s able to replace Google Assistant on your Android phone, and there’s also a free version you can use on any internet browser.

The most recent version, Gemini 2.5 Pro, is now available to all Gemini users and is capable of “thinking” about the questions you ask and providing more comprehensive, targeted answers.

Gemini is a fully-fledged LLM (standing for large language model) meaning it has a much wider range of capabilities when compared to Google Assistant. It can actually conduct its own research and can also process and understand information you input.

In comparison, Google Assistant is more of a chatbot with set routines and limited processing power. If you ask it to do something, it can spit out predetermined answers that its programmed to use but can’t actually think about the information.

Gemini is able to do practically everything, bar physical tasks as it doesn’t have a physical body… yet. That might not be too far in the future, as Gemini Robotics (another division of Google) is working on consumer-grade robotic assistants that can do things like fold your clothes, clean your home, and even play basketball.

Keep in mind that Gemini is more than capable of understanding how — it just needs the physical interface that would allow it to do so. As for the rest of Gemini’s capabilities, it depends on exactly what you want. If you’re finding you’re not getting exactly what you want out of Gemini, it might be down to the prompts you’re inputting so be sure to optimize your Gemini prompts to get the most out of the AI tool.

If you subscribe to Google AI Pro (a paid access tier that provides more advanced functionality), you can use Google’s Veo 3 tool to create videos based on just a few lines of text input.

Currently, Veo 3 can create eight-second clips at 4K resolution. According to Google, Veo 3 can follow prompts like never before and is a major improvement on its predecessor, Veo 2, which was only able to create clips in 720p.

Veo 3 lets you add sound effects, ambient noises and even dialogue to clips. More than that, Google claims that Veo 3 delivers “best in class quality, excelling in physics and realism” and also has fewer hallucinations than its competitors. That means you’ll have fewer characters appearing with too many fingers.

Google Gemini can examine up to 30,000 lines of code or around 1,500 pages of text simultaneously. Feed it a novel and it can summarize the plot, pull out themes, discussion questions, and more. It can help identify flaws in code and assist programmers with troubleshooting.

If you feed Gemini a podcast or an audio recording, it can listen for you and answer specific questions and provide timestamps to save you having to listen to the whole thing to process the information. Gemini is even able to integrate with other Google apps like Gmail and create travel itineraries based on information in your inbox.

Gemini can also generate images from a textual description. It uses Imagen 4, which Google describes as its “highest quality text-to-image model yet.” Tell it what you want it to include in the image, the style you want it to use, and any other relevant details. It can generate anything from old-school cartoons to photorealistic landscapes.

Once it spits out the image, you can refine it to more closely resemble your vision for how it should look.

One of Gemini’s most powerful skills is its Deep Research ability. It can look through hundreds of different sources in real-time in just minutes to find the answers you’re looking for.

For example, you could ask Gemini to find the best locations across the globe for finding beach glass. It could then look into everything from travel blogs to user reviews on Google Maps to find locations and suggest them to you.

After that, you could ask it to find the best time to purchase flights to any of those locations.

Deep Research can save you hours of manual searches when it comes to sources information, and since it provides sources for where it pulls the information from, you can double-check to verify accuracy.

Google has put a lot of work into ensuring Gemini returns accurate responses, but it’s always best to corroborate information yourself instead of taking it at face value.

You can even have a conversation with Gemini through Gemini Live. This lets you speak directly to Gemini without typing in your question, and it will respond in a way that feels natural. You can even interrupt Gemini halfway through a sentence to ask a follow-up question. It’s almost like chatting with a real person.

Gemini Live is great for on-the-go use, especially if you’re using Bluetooth headphones and are trying to get information while on the move. Gemini can process real-time video, giving you answers about what you’re looking at while you walk down the street.

I could provide dozens of other examples. When it comes to Gemini, you can utilize it in a wider variety of ways than we can list here.

Gemini is available on a range of devices from your mobile phone, down to your laptop. On a PC or laptop you’re able to head over to the Gemini website in any internet browser and use the AI in the same way you’re able to use any other chat bot. For those accessing the AI on your mobile phone, Google Gemini is currently available as an app for Android and on iOS devices.

Android phone users are able to switch Google Assistant over to Gemini in their settings. At the moment, the requirements for this include a phone which runs Android 10 or higher and also has more than 2GB of RAM in order to support the AI. The majority of modern devices will meet this criteria but those with older gadgets may find that Gemini isn’t available to them.

Gemini even works with Samsung devices and will tap into native Samsung apps for information it might need.

Basic Gemini features, such as the chatbot, can be used for free. This doesn’t integrate into your other Google products but can still do basic tasks like gathering information and drafting emails for you.

You can also subscribe to Google AI Pro which comes in at $20 per month. This allows you to use the full suite of AI tools from Google including video generation through the Veo 2 Engine. You can grab a free trial of Google AI Pro, which had me absolutely hooked after trying it out. Alongside the AI tools you can access, you also get more storage in your Google Drive.

If you want access to the very latest AI that Google has to offer – including Veo 3 – you’ll need to opt for Google AI Ultra plan, which is a whopping $249.99 per month.

How you change Gemini’s settings will depend on which device you access the AI from. For those who use the Gemini app, you can tap your profile picture (or initial if you don’t have a profile picture) and then select Settings.

For those using Gemini through the Google App, you can tap your profile picture or initial and then select Settings and then press the Gemini option for the more specific settings.

If you’ve opted to have Gemini replace Google Assistant on your Android phone then you can adjust your settings by opening your device’s settings, then search for Gemini or Google Assistant features and then select the app or related setting you want to adjust.

Comparing Siri to Gemini is like comparing a 90’s mobile to a smartphone. One is far more advanced than the the other.

While Siri is technically an AI, it’s not based on a LLM meaning – similar to Google Assistant – it just spits out predetermined answers rather than actually processing and understanding information. This makes Gemini the far superior option.

At the moment there is hope for Siri to improve when Apple rolls out the new and improved version of its voice assistant with Apple Intelligence, the company is already far behind schedule on that front – so much so that I’m considering swapping from my iPhone to a Google Pixel.

Siri would need to play a lot of catch-up to get anywhere close to what Gemini is currently capable of, and Gemini’s head start makes the possibility of Siri closing the gap a slim one.

If you’re an iPhone user and debating whether to wait for Siri to get better or choose Gemini, just go ahead and download the iOS Gemini app. You’ll get far more use out of it in the meantime, and you can always make the jump back to Siri if the new version ever drops.