Google Assistant is going away, to be replaced by - checks notes - Google Assistant by a different name.
k
Tangentially related, does anyone know any FOSS (local preferred, but self hosted if required for performance) assistant apps? After switching to GrapheneOS I do miss Bixby (say what you want about it, but creating reminders/alarms by merely holding down a button and using natural speech was quite handy).
Home Assistant [1] can be a voice assistant (both on phone and on dedicated devices). It's FOSS and can be fully local [2]. It's really gear towards home automation though, so its suitability depends on what you want to do with an assistant
I do want to setup home assistant at some point, but my main usecase for a smartphone assistant is what I mentioned. Things like setting reminders/todo list items, creating calendar events - even sending quick messages to contacts. Basically, things I can already do on my phone, but can do quicker through natural language.
I spent years not upgrading because when I'm in my car asking my phone to navigate somewhere, Gemini likes to say "As a large language model I can't navigate anywhere. Try using a map application on your mobile device."
It still does it, but these days you can reply: "yes you %@#$ing can, use a tool call!!" and it will
Always stuck to the flagship google models as my primary driver (starting with the G1 in college) for the pure google experience, but between killing assistant in favor of Gemini which can't do something as simple as telling me the weather without hallucinating and the sideloading lockdown shenanigans might as well switch over to Apple fully.
Don't be dramatic. Gemini is fine. I have the Google voice setup all throughout my house and haven't had any issues major enough that would want me to keep the original assistant.
It's not dramatic, it's just something you personally haven't noticed. A quick search regarding Gemini weather hallucination shows it's both widespread and something not mitigated by recent model releases. It makes up other basic information or can't perform tasks that a simple assistant can do properly (e.g. mixing up calendar events, emails, can't navigate etc). Why defend what is clearly a move to increase a department's KPIs when you as a consumer receive less in return?
Gemini defaults to performing search from within its own weights until you curse it and damn it sufficiently to do basic RAG. Utter trash on this limitation/behavior alone but there are so many other hallucinatory shenanigans it embraces so why limit yourself to one.
Compare and contrast with asking Claude or ChatGPT a question directly and get back to me.
Hmm. Gemini cannot do various things I used to do with assistant, especially interacting across some apps, or jsut behaving as it used to , and now sometimes ends up in a situation where I have two audio sources playing one over the other with no way to solve it (if you have morning routines that play the news, and it pops up while listening to teh radio, previously I could say 'stop the news' and the radio would continue while the alarm routine news would stop. Now there is no way at all to stop the routines triggered news, it just carries on over the top ov the radio :/
I know I am in the minority, but the killer feature for me is (funny) a vestige from the Google Podcasts days: The "latest news" audio feed it plays back on a built-in player. You tell Assistant to "play the latest news". It plays a pre-selected roster.-
PS. Strangely it used to boilerplate back with "Here's [the/your] latest news" - now it says "Here's your news briefing" ...
Google Assistant is going away, to be replaced by - checks notes - Google Assistant by a different name.
k
Tangentially related, does anyone know any FOSS (local preferred, but self hosted if required for performance) assistant apps? After switching to GrapheneOS I do miss Bixby (say what you want about it, but creating reminders/alarms by merely holding down a button and using natural speech was quite handy).
Home Assistant [1] can be a voice assistant (both on phone and on dedicated devices). It's FOSS and can be fully local [2]. It's really gear towards home automation though, so its suitability depends on what you want to do with an assistant
[1] https://www.home-assistant.io/
[2] Although frankly to have a fast-enough and good-enough LLM you might need to use a service
I do want to setup home assistant at some point, but my main usecase for a smartphone assistant is what I mentioned. Things like setting reminders/todo list items, creating calendar events - even sending quick messages to contacts. Basically, things I can already do on my phone, but can do quicker through natural language.
I spent years not upgrading because when I'm in my car asking my phone to navigate somewhere, Gemini likes to say "As a large language model I can't navigate anywhere. Try using a map application on your mobile device."
It still does it, but these days you can reply: "yes you %@#$ing can, use a tool call!!" and it will
Always stuck to the flagship google models as my primary driver (starting with the G1 in college) for the pure google experience, but between killing assistant in favor of Gemini which can't do something as simple as telling me the weather without hallucinating and the sideloading lockdown shenanigans might as well switch over to Apple fully.
Don't be dramatic. Gemini is fine. I have the Google voice setup all throughout my house and haven't had any issues major enough that would want me to keep the original assistant.
It's not dramatic, it's just something you personally haven't noticed. A quick search regarding Gemini weather hallucination shows it's both widespread and something not mitigated by recent model releases. It makes up other basic information or can't perform tasks that a simple assistant can do properly (e.g. mixing up calendar events, emails, can't navigate etc). Why defend what is clearly a move to increase a department's KPIs when you as a consumer receive less in return?
Gemini defaults to performing search from within its own weights until you curse it and damn it sufficiently to do basic RAG. Utter trash on this limitation/behavior alone but there are so many other hallucinatory shenanigans it embraces so why limit yourself to one.
Compare and contrast with asking Claude or ChatGPT a question directly and get back to me.
I never thought I'd see a Gemini apologist.
Why not use a custom ROM and install what you want?
All the ads I get for Google Gemini are always about fake selfies so I guess fake data is its main purpose
Hmm. Gemini cannot do various things I used to do with assistant, especially interacting across some apps, or jsut behaving as it used to , and now sometimes ends up in a situation where I have two audio sources playing one over the other with no way to solve it (if you have morning routines that play the news, and it pops up while listening to teh radio, previously I could say 'stop the news' and the radio would continue while the alarm routine news would stop. Now there is no way at all to stop the routines triggered news, it just carries on over the top ov the radio :/
As expected (2025) https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/gemini/g...
I'm switching to Ubuntu Touch btw.
I know I am in the minority, but the killer feature for me is (funny) a vestige from the Google Podcasts days: The "latest news" audio feed it plays back on a built-in player. You tell Assistant to "play the latest news". It plays a pre-selected roster.-
PS. Strangely it used to boilerplate back with "Here's [the/your] latest news" - now it says "Here's your news briefing" ...
... but it still works.-
I will miss that.-
google assistant has been failing at more and more extremely simple tasks the last few months. the writing was on the wall.