Gemini is in danger of taking full Copilot

Gemini has trouble walking.

A few years ago, the glowing icon started appearing in all of our Google apps. Gemini in your box! Gemini in your Google Drive! It used to be slow, and easy to dial, but something has changed in the last few months. Gemini crawls. It’s showing up in different places quickly, and personally, it’s starting to confuse me.

Any AI fatigue is familiar to anyone who has used Windows 11. Microsoft went all bananas and put Copilot shortcuts in every place they could find, very angry for many users. Likewise, we’ll no doubt hear about all kinds of new Gemini features at this week’s Google I/O conference, and I pray that Google learns from Microsoft’s mistakes as it opens them up to our Workspace apps. Nobody likes creeps.

I’m a Gemini fan, too. I used the vibe-code app to find out what chores I had for the day. I chat with Gemini on every Android phone I test, and I’ve even started downloading the app on iPhones. That would put me in, like, the 10 percent of Gemini users who don’t work at Google. I’m back to the AI ​​analytics that Google sticks at the top of every search result these days. Sure, there were early ones glue-on-your-pizza days. And maybe they’re helping the death of an open network. But recently I find them reliable enough when taxes are low. How often do I water the lavender seeds, or how long do I cook the potatoes at 400 degrees; so far the AI ​​review has not killed my lavender or cooked my potatoes.

But everyone has their limits, and I think Gemini’s new introduction to Google Docs is where I reached mine. It’s a shiny icon at the bottom of the screen, and if you make a mistake on it, you’ll get it. a complete tool with information provided for Gemini to write to you. Blogging is mine workthank you very much, so i closed that shit. Now, even the Gemini pictures I used to take are starting to bother me. I think I once gave Chrome permission to put a Gemini shortcut in the menu bar at the top of the MacBook’s home screen, because there’s a little light there, always staring at me. When did this happen? Was I fooled? It’s all a little Haley Joel Osment inside The Sixth Power. They are everywhere.

And then there’s the issue of AI as a threat to the developer community — you know, the people Google talks to at I/O. Tech companies are ditching software engineers left and right, saying they don’t need as many warm bodies as AI tools have become better. I’m not sure Gemini is offering to help you write your cover letter with comfort when applying for jobs where AI is being solved.

All this before we consider that companies like Google they are not winning themselves any prestigious competitions as they push to build large data centers around the world. But without going into all that, it’s hard for users to constantly confuse people into using tools they don’t want. I expect this kind of behavior from Meta software, not the software I use. I don’t want to “ask Gmail” when I open my inbox, I want to type in three keywords and get the email I’m looking for. I don’t want to talk to Gemini about my Chrome tabs. I don’t want to “learn the highs and lows” of a folder in my Google Drive. I want AI tools when I find them useful. Otherwise, I just want these things out of my sight, and I don’t think I’m alone.

Photo by Allison Johnson/The Verge