Google If Google has its way, soon your phone, and many other Android-based devices, won't need much input from you at all. During the Android Show: I/O Edition, the company announced Gemini Intelligence, a system designed to automate tedious tasks. In short, Google has created a computer use agent (think: Claude Cowork or Perplexity Personal Computer) for phones.
The company says it spent five months fine-tuning its latest agent to make it capable of seamlessly navigating and completing multi-step tasks across some of the most popular phone apps in use today. As you might imagine, Google claims the system is capable of some significant feats of automation. For instance, the company says the agent can read a class syllabus in Gmail and then put all the books you might need for that course in a shopping cart.
Google adds the system is even more powerful when it can pull context from your phone's screen or an image. The company paints a scenario where users might see a travel brochure in a hotel and ask Gemini to find a similar tour on Expedia.
Understandably, some people might be reluctant to give an AI agent control over their phone. Google says Gemini Intelligence won't begin working on a task until instructed to do so by a user. Moreover, any task that involves Gemini buying something on your behalf will require you to confirm the purchase. Users can also decide when Gemini can access their data using Google's familiar permissions menu, and a progress bar allows users to stop Gemini at any time.
Google plans to first bring Gemini Intelligence to recently-released Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones. It will be interesting to see how much usage people get out of the system. It's not like most apps are hard to use; if anything, over two decades of mobile design, the majority have been streamlined to the point most of us can complete tasks like calling an Uber without much thought. It will also be notable if Gemini Intelligence can avoid the mistakes that other computer use agents like Claude Cowork are prone to making. After all, if you can't count on the software you're using to be consistent, most people are unlikely to use it more than once.
