Google announces transition from assistant to Gemini by year-end

Google announced on Friday that it will discontinue Google Assistant later this year, replacing it with Gemini, its AI-powered assistant.

The tech giant made the announcement in a blog post, outlining its plan to transition users across devices to the more advanced AI system.

While Google did not provide a specific timeline for the transition, it confirmed that Google Assistant will no longer be accessible on most mobile devices by the end of the year.

Google Assistant, launched in 2016, was built primarily on natural language processing and voice recognition. In contrast, Gemini, introduced last year, is a generative AI-powered assistant designed for more advanced reasoning, multimodal understanding (text, images, and audio), and deeper interactions.

According to Google, millions of users have already switched from Assistant to Gemini, and the company plans to expand the transition to more mobile devices in the coming months.

“To continue our work of building the world’s most helpful assistant, we’ve reimagined the experience with AI at its core to make Gemini your personal, AI-powered assistant. While our expectations for what an assistant can do are rapidly changing, the mission remains the same.”

The company added that “millions of people have already made the switch from Google Assistant to Gemini, and they are telling us how helpful the new, AI-powered features are in their daily lives. So we want to update you on how we’ll bring this enhanced experience to as many people as possible.”

To ease the transition, the company has incorporated popular features from Google Assistant, such as music playback and setting timers, into Gemini.