TL;DR
Google unveiled major Gemini app updates at I/O 2026, including a personalised Daily Brief digest, a Neural Expressive redesign, and a cloud-based AI agent called Spark. The app now has 900 million monthly users, and the new features position Gemini as a proactive assistant rather than a reactive chatbot.
Google used the opening keynote of I/O 2026 to unveil a wave of updates to its Gemini app, headlined by a feature called Daily Brief, a personalised morning digest that pulls from a user’s inbox, calendar, and task list to deliver a prioritised overview of the day ahead. The feature does not merely summarise, it also suggests next steps, surfacing the most pressing items first. Daily Brief is rolling out today to Google AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra subscribers in the United States.
The update arrives as Gemini’s user base has grown sharply. Google said the app now serves more than 900 million monthly active users across more than 230 countries and 70 languages, up from roughly 400 million at last year’s I/O. That figure makes it, by Google’s own accounting, the most widely available generative AI tool in the world.
A visual overhaul Google calls ‘Neural Expressive’
Alongside Daily Brief, Google introduced a new design language for the Gemini app. Dubbed Neural Expressive, the refresh brings fluid animations, vibrant colour palettes, new typography, and haptic feedback. Responses are no longer presented as walls of text. Instead, key information is bolded at the top, with the option to scroll for deeper detail. When relevant, inline images, narrated videos, timelines, and interactive visualisations appear in place of prose.
The redesign is rolling out now on Android, iOS, and the web. It also folds Gemini Live, the voice conversational interface, directly into the core experience, allowing users to switch between typing and speaking without breaking context. For Google, the overhaul is an attempt to make AI interactions feel less like querying a search engine and more like consulting an assistant that understands presentation as well as content.
Gemini Spark: the agent that runs while you sleep
The most ambitious addition is Gemini Spark, a cloud-based AI agent built on the new Gemini 3.5 Flash model. Spark is designed to handle tasks proactively across Gmail, Docs, and other connected Google services, and, crucially, it continues working even after a user locks their phone or closes their laptop. Because it runs on Google Cloud infrastructure, no device needs to stay active.
Spark will be available as a beta to trusted testers this week and to US-based Google AI Ultra subscribers starting next week. Ultra itself has had a price adjustment, dropping from $250 per month to $100, a move clearly intended to sharpen Google’s competitive position against OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. The $100 Ultra tier includes five times the usage limits of the $20 AI Pro plan, 20 terabytes of cloud storage, YouTube Premium, and beta access to Spark.
Gemini Omni and the push into video
Google also announced Gemini Omni, a new AI video model that accepts images, audio, and text as inputs to generate video. Omni had already been spotted in the Gemini interface earlier this month, when a UI string referencing the model leaked ahead of I/O. The model is expected to roll out to Google Flow and YouTube Shorts, giving creators multimodal video tools directly inside platforms they already use.
The Omni announcement slots into a broader arms race in AI-generated video, where Google is competing not only with OpenAI but also with ByteDance’s Seedance and other emerging players. Early assessments suggest Omni excels at prompt adherence and in-chat editing, though its raw generation quality in the initial Flash tier may lag behind some rivals.
What it means for the AI assistant race
Taken together, the updates signal that Google is shifting Gemini from a reactive chatbot into something closer to a proactive personal operating system. Daily Brief handles the morning routine, Neural Expressive makes the interface less clinical, and Spark promises to keep working autonomously around the clock. The approach mirrors what Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is pursuing with his own AI agent ambitions, and what OpenAI has been telegraphing with its operator-style features.
Whether 900 million users will embrace a morning briefing from their AI assistant, or whether Spark’s autonomous task execution will raise more privacy questions than it answers, remains to be seen. But with Google now embedding Gemini into everything from factory robots to mobile apps, the company is clearly betting that the future of AI is not a single chatbot but an interconnected layer that runs across every surface of daily life.
