CALIFORNIA: Google has announced that Google Assistant will no longer be available on most Android devices starting September 4, as the tech giant continues its transition to Gemini, its next-generation artificial intelligence assistant.
The company has begun notifying users that Google Assistant will be discontinued on Android smartphones, tablets, Wear OS smartwatches, compatible wireless earbuds, and Android Auto-enabled vehicles. After the deadline, Gemini will become the default AI assistant for eligible devices.
According to Google, only vehicles equipped with Google built-in will continue to support Google Assistant after September 4. Users with compatible Android devices that meet the required system specifications and are located in regions where Gemini is available will automatically be upgraded.
Once the transition is complete, activating the assistant by saying “Hey Google” or pressing and holding the power button will launch Gemini instead of Google Assistant.
Google introduced Assistant during its Google I/O 2016 developer conference before rolling it out through the now-discontinued Google Allo messaging app and Google Home smart speakers. Later that year, it debuted on the first-generation Pixel smartphones and expanded to Android devices, smart displays, televisions, third-party speakers, Wear OS devices and Apple’s iOS platform.
The shift toward Gemini reflects Google’s broader AI strategy following the rapid rise of ChatGPT, which transformed the artificial intelligence landscape by offering advanced conversational abilities, content generation, coding assistance and complex question answering.
In response to growing competition in generative AI, Google launched Bard, its first conversational AI chatbot, which was later rebranded as Gemini.
Since then, Gemini has received several major upgrades, including Gemini 3.5 and Gemini Spark, a persistent AI assistant capable of managing digital tasks in the background. Google has also introduced Gemini Omni, a multimodal AI model that can understand and generate content using text, images, audio and video.
The company says the transition to Gemini is intended to provide users with a more intelligent, context-aware and versatile AI experience across Google’s ecosystem as it continues investing heavily in next-generation artificial intelligence technologies.
