A month after launching as a subscriber-only feature, Google’s Gemini Live is now being made available to more users of the chatbot at no cost, as announced this Thursday.
We're rolling out Gemini Live in English to additional users of the Android app, free of charge. Engage with Gemini Live to discuss topics, explore new ideas, or brainstorm with this innovative chatbot.
Gemini Live is Google’s response to OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT. It enables users to have real-time conversations with the chatbot using spoken natural language prompts instead of text inputs.
To access Gemini Live, open the Gemini app and tap the Sparkle icon located in the lower-right corner of the screen. After your conversation with the AI, you can either press the Stop button or simply say “stop.” The system will then create a transcript of your discussion, which will appear in your chat history for future reference.
However, this feature comes with certain limitations. Currently, it is exclusively available for English-speaking Android users and is not compatible with iOS devices or with other Gemini Workspace integrations such as YouTube Music or Gmail. Additional compatibility options are expected to be rolled out in the future.
In comparison, OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode is still in beta and is limited to select ChatGPT Plus subscribers. OpenAI plans to make this feature available to all subscribers in the coming months, but a specific timeline has yet to be announced. Users interested in ChatGPT will need to subscribe for $20 per month to be eligible for this rollout, with no guarantee on the timing of access.
Both Google and OpenAI are actively exploring ways to incorporate mobile device cameras into their live voice chat features. This integration would provide additional multimodal context for responding to voice queries. However, neither company has specified when these updates will be released.
To try out Gemini Live for yourself, download the Gemini App from Google Play.