If it wasn’t clear before that Google’s Gemini chatbot was rushed out the door, it’s now.
Gemini’s since-removed image generator put people of color in Nazi-era uniforms. The chatbot’s commentary continues to tend toward the absurd besides, like equating Hitler’s record with Elon Musk posting memes.
On Android, Gemini also breaks Google Assistant’s song recognition. And to me, after Gemini’s abhorrent cultural insensitivities, it’s some of the frustrating things about it.
Let me explain.
I mostly use Gemini on my aging Samsung Galaxy A53 5G, which isn’t precisely the zippiest Android smartphone on the market. To make it snappier, I replaced the default home screen with a minimalist alternative, Niagara Launcher, which is actually an alphabetized list of the apps installed on my phone.
Niagara’s great. However it’s limited in what it might probably do by design, which made me depending on Google Assistant — now Gemini — for tasks like setting timers, launching apps and so forth.
Song recognition, prompted with a command like “OK Google, what’s this song?,” was a Google Assistant-delivered convenience I took advantage of often. It got here in handy in nightclubs, restaurants and bars for IDing tracks I’d most definitely forget otherwise. There’s no shortage of song-recognizing apps — Apple-owned Shazam to call one. But Google Assistant was among the many higher on the market when it comes to accuracy, a minimum of in my experience.
So imagine my frustration after I discovered that Gemini on Android can’t recognize songs — and even perform the essential task of funneling song ID requests to Google Assistant.
Ask Gemini, which replaces Google Assistant on Android, to ID a song and it has the nerve to suggest using apps like Shazam — or invoking Google Assistant by switching back to it. For added variety, it’ll occasionally suggest random songs from YouTube.
Image Credits: Google
I’m acutely aware it is a first-world problem. I could launch song recognition from the Google Search app on Android. Or, were I using a traditional home screen, I could place the dedicated song ID shortcut.
But the opposite aspect of Google Assistant’s song recognition that made it so attractive, a minimum of to this author, was the low barrier to make use of. Launching the feature didn’t require twiddling with an app or typing anything in. A voice command later and it was up and running, which made it fast — useful once you’re attempting to quickly ID a song.
Making the song recognition situation more disheartening is the undeniable fact that I’m paying for the Google One AI Premium Plan, priced at $20 monthly, which is supposed to afford me access to a more sophisticated, powerful Gemini experience. Perhaps it’s sophisticated in other ways — ways I haven’t discovered yet, frankly. But broken song recognition, together with missing basic features like the power to play songs, create lists and more, make Gemini a really poor substitute for Google Assistant on Android at present.
Full transparency, I’ve reached out to Google about song recognition via Gemini and I’ll update this post if I hear back.
