As we enter 2025, here are the major Google Gemini features released in 2024

2024 was a big year for the tech world, especially for Google. It started marketing most of its AI catalog under the Gemini branding, representing the conversational chatbot and its underlying AI models.

The search giant released many new products, features, and changes in the generative AI space. Let's recap major Google Gemini features and changes introduced throughout the year. In your free time, check out various products and services Google discontinued in 2024 and the Instagram features wishlist.

Note: The list is not exhaustive and may not include all the Gemini features released in 2024.

Renaming Bard chatbot to Gemini

One of the biggest changes we saw earlier this year was Google rebranding Bard to Gemini, bringing the naming scheme in sync with its pre-existing Gemini models. The company also tagged the freshly-baked Gemini 1.0 Pro model along with it and introduced Gemini in over 40+ languages and 230 countries globally.

A Google engineer later revealed "Why Gemini is called Gemini" and said that the AI model has a two-fold meaning behind its name. Its ability to handle different data types aligns with the dual-natured personality of the Gemini zodiac sign. The name also draws inspiration from NASA's early moonshot program called Project Gemini.

Mobile apps, paid version of Gemini, support for Chromebook Plus

Google also introduced the Gemini app for Android in February, eventually replacing Google Assistant as the default voice assistant for Android. At the time, iOS users could access the Gemini chatbot via the Google app.

In the same month, the search giant launched a paid subscription for its AI chatbot called Gemini Advanced, which gives users access to the most capable Gemini models, such as Gemini Ultra 1.0, 1.5 Pro, and experimental stuff such as Gemini-Exp-1206.

Furthermore, it brought various Gemini features, such as "Help Me Write," to the Chromebook Plus laptops, accessible via a dedicated Gemini button on the home screen app shelf.

Support for Google Maps

The capabilities of the Gemini AI chatbot can be enhanced with the help of Gemini extensions. In March, Google updated Gemini with support for Google Maps, allowing users to issue commands to trigger navigation from within the chatbot.

For instance, you can issue commands like "Navigate me to [X]," Gemini will display data such as distance, estimated time, and a link to Google Maps. The navigation will automatically start after a few seconds.

Vids

As the name suggests, Vids is a new Gemini-powered video creation tool Google launched in April this year to easily create training videos, presentations, updates, or marketing content. It offers a timeline-style user interface to assemble video assets from Google Drive or elsewhere, record voiceovers, or film yourself directly from the app.

You can collaborate with others and control who can edit, comment, or view your videos. Note that Google Vids is part of the Workspace suite and is a paid offering.

YouTube Music extension

Another add-on for the chatbot was a new YouTube Music extension in May. It allows Gemini users to connect YouTube Music with the chatbot to search their favourite songs, play radio, discover new artists and playlists, and more.

Gemini version updates and new models

The year 2024 saw several updates to Gemini models as well. Gemini 1.5 Flash was introduced in May as a lightweight LLM, which excelled "at summarization, chat applications, image and video captioning, data extraction from long documents and tables, and more."

This was followed by a smaller variant of 1.5 Flash (known as Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B); a new Gemini 1.5 Pro model with improved coding and complex prompt performance; and a new Gemini 1.5 Flash model with significant improvements.

Last month marked the debut of Gemini 2.0. Google announced the experimental Gemini 2.0 Flash model with support for natively generated images mixed with text and steerable text-to-speech (TTS) multilingual audio.

Ask Photos assistant

Google I/O 2024's limelight might have shadowed the Ask Photos assistant for Google Photos announced at the conference. The digital assistant powered by Gemini AI models can be used to pull photos/videos from your gallery, generate personalized captions, explain what's going on in them, or create trip highlights after a vacation.

Expanding Gemini to the education sector

In May, Google also expanded Gemini for Workspace into the education sector by introducing two new add-ons: Gemini Education and Gemini Education Premium. The latter allowed access to features like AI-powered note-taking and summaries in Meet and AI-enhanced data loss prevention.

Gemini side panels for Workspace apps

Google's pursuit of putting its AI chatbot everywhere possible paved the road for Gemini side panels for Workspace apps. In June, the search giant launched Gemini side panels for its web apps, including Google Docs, Slides, Drive, and Gmail.

The side panels are customized according to the app. For instance, Gemini in Gmail can summarize emails, suggest responses, and summarize email threads. Meanwhile, it can generate new presentation slides in Google Slides and create custom images.

In November, the Gemini side panel was also added to Google Chat. Like other apps, it can summarize conversations and save users from the pain of reading the entire thing.

Gemini Live

In August, Gemini Live was launched at the Pixel hardware event to give smartphone users a natural conversation experience with the AI chatbot. You can talk to Gemini like a normal back-and-forth chat, leave the conversation at any time, and continue it later.

You can also continue the discussion with Gemini while the app is in the background or your phone is locked. Gemini Live was initially included with Gemini Advanced, but now it's available through the Gemini app on Android and iOS. The feature was later expanded to add support for over 40 languages.

Custom Gems for Gemini

Custom Gems lets you create versions of the Gemini chatbot tailored for specific use cases. For instance, you can brainstorm ideas for an upcoming event, remember detailed instructions, or create a learning coach.

The premium feature was rolled out to Gemini Advanced, Business, and Enterprise users in over 150 countries. You can go to the Gem manager to access pre-made gems or create new ones by clicking the "+ Add Gem" button and typing its purpose and goal.

Imagen 3 and Whisk image generator

Google's highest-quality text-to-image model, Imagen 3, was launched in October following its announcement earlier this year. The latest image generation model works with Gemini apps for users in all supported languages.

Imagen 3 better understands natural language and the intent behind the prompt. Users can write prompts to generate photorealistic landscapes, textured oil paintings or whimsical claymation scenes, and issue subsequent commands to refine it further.

Earlier this month, Google used Imagen 3 to power a new generative AI tool called Whisk, which takes images as input to generate new images.

Gemini in Opera browser, Snapchat integration

Opera joined hands with Google Cloud to leverage Gemini's capabilities for its in-browser AI known as Aria, which already utilizes the power of multiple large language models (LLMs). The partnership brought Google's text-to-voice and image generation capabilities to the Opera browser.

Meanwhile, Snapchat was another third-party platform that gained access to Gemini's features in 2024. The social media giant partnered with Google to make the My AI chatbot smarter than before and offer a multimodal experience. The search giant claimed that Gemini's integration with My AI improved user engagement within the US by 2.5x.

Deep Research

If you use Google's generative AI chatbot for extensive research sessions, a new AI-powered assistant called Deep Research can help with your exploration. It is designed to cut down hours of research by doing in-depth document analysis, document summarization, and pulling key insights from large amounts of information.

Note that Deep Research is a part of Gemini Advanced (a paid offering) and is available in over 45+ languages in 150+ countries globally.

Natural language search in Google Maps

In a new update to its navigation app, Google added a Gemini-powered search feature to Google Maps. In other words, you can type natural language queries in the Google Maps search bar. For instance, you can find new places by typing "things to do with friends at night." The chatbot creates summarized reviews about places you read to get an idea about them.

Play songs from Spotify

Not just YouTube Music, Gemini also added support for the rival music streaming app Spotify. The AI chatbot can play Spotify music on your Android device without the need for any app-switching.

You can use the Gemini chat interface to request songs, browser playlists, and search for music through lyrics, among various features. However, you need a Spotify Premium account for the integration to work.

Gemini controversies

It's not just new features, Google's generative AI chatbot has landed in several controversies as well. In February, Gemini's image generation feature was in hot waters after showing bias in generating images of people. As a result, the image generator was temporarily halted, and Google had to explain the unexpected behavior.

An X user claimed Gemini summarized a PDF file automatically and without explicitly being asked to, noting that the required setting was already disabled.

Another report claimed that Google hires contractors to rate Gemini's responses based on qualities like accuracy, clarity, and safety and compare the responses with those from Anthropic's LLM Claude. The contractors noticed similarities between the responses from the two platforms. While comparing models isn't uncommon, the report didn't receive a satisfactory response from Google.