• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 14, 2025

Google has decided to dump Google Assistant for Gemini as more people adopt the platform. The company also began a movement to change AI policies in response to the Trump administration’s call for a national AI Action Plan.

In February, the White House released an AI Action Plan to define priority policy actions that enhance "America’s position as an AI powerhouse and prevent unnecessarily burdensome requirements from hindering private sector innovation."

Google on Thursday published a policy proposal that endorsed weaker copyright restrictions on AI training, as well as “balanced” data-export controls that “protect national security while enabling U.S. exports and global business operations.”

“The U.S. needs to pursue an active international economic policy to advocate for American values and support AI innovation internationally,” Google wrote in the document.

The paper outlines AI policymaking and how it has received disproportionate attention to the risks, often ignoring the costs that misguided regulation can have on innovation, national competitiveness, and scientific leadership.

During the coming months, Google will upgrade more users to Gemini on mobile devices, and toward the end of the year, it will sunset Google Assistant.

Upgrades will also occur on tablets, cars and devices that connect to phones such as headphones and watches. The new experience, powered by Gemini, will come to home devices like speakers, displays and TVs. Until then, Google Assistant will continue to operate on these devices.

The Gemini app is now available in more than 40 languages and 200 countries. The app has been updated to support more of the most requested features, such as playing music, setting timers, or taking action from your lockscreen.

Google said Gemini’s capabilities go far beyond what Google Assistant did, and can provide an entirely new kind of help, with features like Gemini Live for free-flowing, multimodal conversations and Deep Research, which can transform Gemini into a personal research assistant and are only possible with AI.

Gemini can understand natural language and have a conversation with the technology. It's built on large and sophisticated AI models, which means that in some instances simple requests might take longer than with Google Assistant, but this is something the company is working to fix.

While Gemini can answer many more questions than Google Assistant, Gemini may not always get it correct. Users can check Gemini’s responses with Google's double-check feature, review the sources that Gemini shares in many of its responses, or use Google Search for critical facts.

The most-used features for Gemini include checking the weather, event reminders, Maps, Gmail, Drive, playing music, access information about hotels, setting alarms, making calls, and many more.