Gemini keeps falling short of Google Assistant by not identifying songs

“Hey Google, what song is playing?” Many of us are used to asking this question when we hear an absolute banger of a song playing in a bar or a restaurant. There are some people who use it so often that it becomes absolutely intuitive. However, it appears that the Google Assistant’s next of kin, Gemini, lacks this years-old functionality. According to a report, Gemini cannot identify songs.

In case you don’t know, Google is in the process of training Gemini to replace Google Assistant. The Google Assistant has been around for almost eight years. However, Google’s ambitious and very rushed generative AI plans have started putting nails into Google Assistant’s coffin. Over the past couple of weeks, Gemini’s assistant function has been gaining more features. For example, just recently, Gemini gained the ability to integrate with Google Assistant to create Tasks. Also, Gemini can now integrate with Google Calendar to view and create events.

However, this still shows how hastily Google threw Gemini out onto the market to keep up with the changing tech landscape. We are all still waiting for it to become a proper replacement for Google Assistant, but that could take a while. Google Assistant was gradually massaged into the Android experience over the course of years; Gemini is only a few months old.

Gemini cannot identify songs, and that’s a bummer

Right now, people using Gemini as an assistant are navigating its limitations. When they summon it to identify a song, rather than give them the song’s name, artist, and links to listen to it (like Google Assistant does), it does something that’s pretty surprising. Looking at the screenshot below, we see that, rather than identifying the song, it gives you suggestions of different apps to use to identify that song and tips on how to use those apps. One of the apps is Apple-owned Shazam.

This method is extremely counterintuitive to the concept of using Google Assistant. People use Google Assistant for the convenience. It’s supposed to quickly let you know what song is on with no additional steps. However, Gemini suggests that you download, install, sign up for, and use different apps just to identify a song. By the time you do that, the song will most likely have passed.

Another thing that Gemini does is recommend that you use Google Assistant… Again, it defeats the purpose of using Gemini if you have to switch to another assistant just to use a simple function.

At this point, we’re certain that Gemini will gain this functionality at some point in the future. It’s currently trickling features down to Gemini over time.

But this is still a major issue

Ever since Google unveiled its first generative AI products, they’ve been rife with issues, missing features, and overall frustration. Sure, the technology powering them is powerful, but Google has been rushing everything to the market. It all started with Google Bard’s unveil when it provided inaccurate information. This rushed mentality continues to this day. Rather than working on porting all of Google Assistant’s abilities over to Gemini internally and then launching a full product, Google launched Gemini as a bare-bones assistant and is slowly adding features.

This is extremely frustrating because people are constantly finding areas where Gemini is a poor assistant. For all its forward-thinking and paradigm-shifting AI prowess, it’s a massive step back compared to what we’ve had years ago. Google Assistant was a part of Android’s DNA and deeply integrated into the operating system. Google Gemini just seems like any AI app you could download from the Play Store. It may as well just be the ChatGPT app.

Google has to get its act together before Apple unveils its AI model. Undoubtedly, when Apple launches its AI model, it’s going to be extremely complete and integrated into the services that Apple users always use. It seems like Apple will take the time to make a complete product before unveiling it rather than unveiling an incomplete product and slowly adding features.