Google’s Gemini Live is now available for free on Android

By Andrew Tarantola Published September 12, 2024

Person holding a phone with Google Gemini Live being shown. — Bryan M. Wolfe / Digital Trends

A month after debuting as a subscriber-only feature, Google’s Gemini Live is rolling out to more of the chatbot’s users free of charge, the company announced Thursday.

We're starting to roll out Gemini Live in English to more people using the Android app, free of charge. Go Live to talk things out with Gemini, explore a new topic, or brainstorm ideas. Keep an eye out for Gemini Live in the Gemini app 👀 pic.twitter.com/0VL0c7E6Gw

— Google Gemini App (@GeminiApp) September 12, 2024

Gemini Live is Google’s answer to OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT. It allows users to interact directly and conversationally with the chatbot, in real time, using spoken natural language prompts rather than text-based inputs.

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To access it, open the Gemini app and click on the Sparkle icon in the lower-right corner of the screen. Once you’ve finished conversing with the AI, you can either click the Stop button or simply say, “stop” and the system will then generate a transcript of what you talked about. That transcript will appear in your chat history list for later review.

The feature does have some limitations. For example, it is currently available only to English-language Android users and cannot be used on iOS devices or with Gemini’s other Workspace integrations like YouTube Music or Gmail, though that functionality is expected to arrive at some point in the future.

OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode, on the other hand, is still in beta and has only been made available to select ChatGPT Plus subscribers. OpenAI has stated that the feature will roll out to its entire subscriber base in the coming months, but has yet to set a date. ChatGPT users will need to shell out for the $20-per-month subscription just to be considered for the rollout, and there’s no guarantee on when they’ll actually gain access.

Both Google and OpenAI are reportedly working to integrate the mobile device’s camera with their live voice chat features, enabling your phone to access additional multimodal context when answering your spoken queries, though neither company has set a specific date for their respective releases.

If you want to check out Gemini Live for yourself, download the Gemini App from Google Play.

Andrew Tarantola

Former Computing Writer

Andrew Tarantola is a journalist with more than a decade reporting on emerging technologies ranging from robotics and machine…

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