The feature currently works with Nest cameras and select third-party cameras. Even better, you can use Gemini directly inside the Google Home app to create these automations. Just describe what you want in natural language, and AI will build the automation for you.
For now, the smarter camera-based automation feature is only available in English for US users enrolled in the Google Home Public Preview program. You’ll also need a Google Home Premium Advanced subscription to access it.
More latency and speed improvements
Google is further improving how Gemini understands and executes smart home commands. You can now give it more complex, multi-step instructions, and it will handle them automatically.
Gemini is getting better at understanding casual, natural language as well. For example, you can turn off the lights by simply saying, “set brightness to 0.”
The company says it has further reduced latency, especially for everyday commands, making the overall experience of using Gemini feel faster and more responsive.
Google highlighted several additional reliability and performance improvements coming to the Google Home platform:
As part of our deep, ongoing investments in speed and latency, we continue to optimize the platform experience while in early access.
- Improved response reliability: We’ve made a number of model updates to make your experience faster and more reliable. And, we’ve reduced instances where Gemini mistakenly claims it cannot perform a supported task, such as playing music or controlling lights.
- Additional optimizations for alarms and timers: Building on recent latency improvements, we’ve further optimized stop and snooze commands for speed, making daily time-tracking and wake-up alerts even more responsive. Gemini is also better at keeping track of active running timers during conversations and understanding which timer or alarm you’re referring to when requesting to change or cancel it.
- More complete answers: Gemini provides more complete responses to questions about general knowledge, weather, and sports, so you get all the key information up front.
Google is rolling out a few smaller quality-of-life improvements, too. You can now say “stop” to end a Gemini response without interrupting music playing in the background.
The company has also fixed a bug that prevented Apple Music playback on Gemini-powered speakers.
You can find Google’s full list of changes to Gemini for Home here.
