The confrontation continues in the field of generative AI. First launched in the Philippines at the beginning of the week, the Google Gemini app for iOS is now widely available and also in Switzerland since Thursday. This launch comes several months after its availability on Android and before the official deployment in Europe of Apple Intelligence on the most recent iPhones. Until now, Google’s generative AI could already be used on iPhone, but only via the web browser or the Gemini tab integrated into the Google app, which was less practical.
Downloadable for free from the App Store, the Google Gemini app for iPhone includes most of the features already found on Android devices, such as access to the Gemini Live voice mode, available in more than ten languages. This allows you to chat in a natural way with the assistant as if it were a human. It is possible to choose from ten different voices (involved, cheerful, calm, energetic and more or less low or high). As with the voice mode of the competitor ChatGPT, it is possible to interrupt it to ask a question or change the subject, for example. The Google Gemini app for iOS, which is capable of providing information from user-submitted images, also includes the Imagen 3 image generation model. This transforms text descriptions into AI-generated images .
Another feature is access to information from other Google apps on the iPhone, such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar or YouTube, to include it in conversations.
For its part, the start-up OpenAI extended its ChatGPT app for Microsoft’s Windows computer system to all users on Thursday. First launched on macOS, then on Windows, this dedicated app provides access to the features of the famous assistant without using a web browser. Until now, it was reserved for paying subscribers (ChatGPT Plus Enterprise, Edu). Available for free on the Microsoft Store, it allows you to activate the chatbot by pressing the Alt + Space shortcut.
