Google’s Pixel 9 and the end of Google Assistant

Let me just take a second to say what I suspect most of us are thinking right now: Sigh.

All right — with that out of the way, we’re ready to get to the crux of this conversation: Google’s next-gen Pixel 9 devices are set to officially break cover in just over a couple weeks now. And from the looks of it, they’ll be ushering in a new era of on-the-go Google goodness while, just as notably, saying adieu to an old one.

As you’ve probably figured out by this point, I’m not talkin’ about the hardware itself or anything specific to the phones’ forms. I’m talkin’ about the virtual assistant at the heart of the Pixel and broader Android experience — the thing we interact with and rely on all throughout our days and the glue that pulls all those precious Pixely pieces together.

By all counts, it looks like the Pixel 9 and its brethren could effectively mark the end of Google Assistant and put the nail in the coffin of the service Google’s spent the past eight years weaving into every last area of our lives.

One more time, together now: Sigh.

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The Google Assistant era — Pixel and beyond

Time for a quick rewind — ’cause a teensy plop of context will go a long way toward paving the path we’re about to embark on.

Back in 2016, y’see, Google rolled out the red carpet for a snazzy new service that was said to be “your own personal Google” — “a Google for your world.”

That was none other than Google Assistant, of course — the service that quickly spread everywhere and started to take shape as a platform all its own.

Assistant wasn’t perfect, by any means, but it was pretty darn good at getting stuff done — helping us perform simple tasks and get swift answers without having to use our hands or futz around with any on-screen menus.

And goodness gracious, was it everywhere. That colorful Assistant logo showed up in all sorts of places — apps and physical products alike. 

As a certain greasy-beaked gazelle once put it:

It’s hard now to even convey just how big of a deal Assistant’s arrival was at that point and then continued to be over the years that followed, up until extremely recently. …

From early on, the service connected to countless other Google services — from its integration into every imaginable corner of Android and ChromeOS to its home at the core of all Google-associated smart displays, TV systems, and speakers. It came to Android Auto, even, and showed up as the branding behind all sorts of smart Pixel calling features.

Heck, Google’s presence at tech conventions turned into a literal Assistant playground for years, with endless plastering of Assistant branding everywhere you looked and — well, stuff like this:

You get the idea. (Of course you do. You’ve presumably lived through all this, right alongside me!)

Now, after eight years of expanding upon Assistant, injecting it everywhere, and turning it into a household name, Google appears poised to give up on it entirely.

It’s a facepalm-inducing pivot we’ve been we’ve watching come at us like a slow-moving train for months now, and it’s looking more and more like the Pixel 9’s arrival could be the moment it comes crashing into reality at last.

Gemini and the Google Pixel connection

For a while now, Google’s been hinting — but not outright saying — that Assistant’s days are numbered, as its newer large-language-model-powered Gemini AI assistant prepares to take its place.

That hinting has come mostly in the form of Assistant’s core functionality getting worse and worse by the week — that, and the Assistant branding Google worked to bring into every last nook and cranny slowly starting to fade while mentions of Gemini pop up everywhere. Amidst all of this, Google has said nary a word about the longer-term fate of Assistant and if or how it might fit into its Gemini-centric plans for the future.

Over the past several weeks, though, two interesting things have happened:

First, Motorola launched its latest foldable Razr phones. That in and of itself isn’t especially interesting, as no one in the right minds should be buying Moto devices these days (for reasons you, as a smart and informed Android-appreciating animal, surely know by now).

But what is interesting is the fact that those gutsy gizmos were the first Android devices to ship with Gemini present and enabled by default as the on-demand virtual assistant. No Google Assistant, in other words: When you press and hold the power button or say “Hey Google,” it’s Gemini that shows up and responds.

Second, following the typical deluge of prerelease Google hardware leaks, Google put out its own official Pixel 9 preview video this week. And — well, see for yourself:

Yup — it’s all about Gemini and its role in the Pixel 9 experience.

Combine that with the Moto device switch and everything we’ve seen about Gemini gaining prominence while Assistant sputters ever closer to the Google graveyard, and it sure seems like this could be the moment that actually marks the effective end of the Assistant era — even if it inevitably takes a while for the rest of the Android ecosystem to catch up.

Google’s Pixel 9 assistant philosophy

I won’t beat around the bush — and if you’ve read my ramblings for long, this probably won’t come as a surprise: I’m not completely convinced that the move to Gemini as the go-to Android assistant for Pixel phones or any other Android gadgets is a good thing. Not at this point, at least.

Frankly, it feels premature. Gemini still can’t handle all the basic, task-oriented stuff that Assistant excels (or at least excelled) at. And the generative-AI elements it adds into the equation — generating (awkward and robotic) text, creating (mostly creepy-looking) images, summarizing text (with varying amounts of accuracy), and so on — just aren’t all that pertinent to the Android assistant environment. That’s to say nothing of the very real questions that still linger around the quality, accuracy, and originality of the information the service serves us.

Plus, you can access all those same generative-AI elements in so many other places now — including, increasingly, within most Google Android apps — that having ’em built into your assistant seems superfluous and unnecessary. So ultimately, we’re gaining very little while losing a lot.

Now, look: I certainly get why Google wants to position Gemini as the exciting new must-have tech advancement that’s changing the face of Android and its Pixel devices. I’m just not sure the tool itself is up to that task yet. And I’m not entirely convinced it ever will be.

As our aforementioned affable antelope put it:

The reality is that large-language models like Gemini and ChatGPT are wildly impressive at a very small set of specific, limited tasks. They work wonders when it comes to unambiguous data processing, text summarizing, and other low-level, closely defined and clearly objective chores. That’s great! They’re an incredible new asset for those sorts of purposes.

But everyone in the tech industry seems to be clamoring to brush aside an extremely real asterisk to that — and that’s the fact that Gemini, ChatGPT, and other such systems simply don’t belong everywhere. They aren’t at all reliable as “creative” tools or tools intended to parse information and provide specific, factual answers. And we, as actual human users of the services associated with this stuff, don’t need this type of technology everywhere — and might even be actively harmed by having it forced into so many places where it doesn’t genuinely belong.

And yet — well, here we are.

By all indications, next month’s Pixel 9 arrival will mark the end of a major era that was positioned as the Future of Google™ a mere matter of months back. And, I suppose, only time will tell whether that ends up being a positive move from the perspective of us — the actual humans who use and rely on this technology — or a loss we’ll lament for a long time to come.

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