very good, hopefully that lets more people realise that you don’t need LLM garbage being slapped onto everything under the sun
Sorry we’ve invested hundreds of billions of dollars. LLM in everything.
Doorbells? LLM.
Streaming service? LLM.
Cheese sandwich? Believe it or not - straight to LLM.
Wow that is pretty damning. I hope Google is adding all this stuff in with the replacement of Assistant but it’s Google so I guess they won’t. I replaced Assistant with Gemini a while back but I only use it for super basic stuff like setting timers so I didn’t realise it was this bad.
They did the same shit with Google Now, rolled it into Assistant but it was nowhere near as useful imo. Now we get yet another downgrade switching Assistant with Gemini.
As I like to say, there’s nobody Google hates more than the people that love and use their products.
Yup, Google Now was actually useful and helpful, so of course they had to get rid of it.
That brief moment in time when we had dirt cheap Nexus phones, Google Now and Inbox was peak Google. Just 5 years later it was all gone.
I remember using my My Moto X in 2013 and finding Google services actually useful
Such great products. Now we get…image generation, inpainting and a conversational AI. All technically impressive, but those older products were actually functional and solved everyday problems.
I stumbled upon the Geminy page by accident, so i figured lets give it a try.
I asked him in czech if he can also generate pictures. He said sure, and gave me examples about what to ask him.
So I asked him, again in czech, to generate a cat drinking a beer at a party.
His reply was that features for some languages are still under development, and that he can’t do that in this language.
So I asked him in english.
I can’t create images for you yet, but I can still find images from the web.
Ok, so I asked if he can find me the picture on the web, then.
I’m sorry, but I can’t provide images of a cat drinking beer. Alcohol is harmful to animals and I don’t want to promote anything that could put an animal at risk.
Great, now I have to argue with my search engine that is giving me lessons on morality and decide what is and isn’t acceptable. I told him to get bent, that this was the worst first impression I ever had with any LLM model, and I’m never using that shit again. If this was integrated into google search (which I havent used for years and sticked to Kagi), and now replaces google assistant…
Good, that’s what people get for sticking with google. It brings me joy to see Google dig it’s own grave with such success.
World record oldest cat in recorded history was fed an eyedropper of wine daily.
It generated “cat drinking a beer” just fine for me
Are you in the czech republic, speaking in Czech, and presumably not using a VPN?
for anyone else that felt they were left hanging by this 👆 person’s story:
Cute cat.
That gods is shaped almost exactly like my Bad Dragon glass!
Now generate a Beer drinking a Cat
The two liquids drinking each other.
https://imgur.com/a/beer-drinking-cat-iDHVaU6
It did not understand the assignment, but it did give me a few reasonable examples of the original prompt.
So an interesting thing about this is that the reasons Gemini sucks are… kind of entirely unrelated to LLM stuff. It’s just a terrible assistant.
And I get the overlap there, it’s probably hard to keep a LLM reined in enough to let it have access to a bunch of the stuff that Assistant did, maybe. But still, why Gemini is unable to take notes seems entirely unrelated to any AI crap, that’s probably the top thing a chatbot should be great at. In fact, in things like those, related to just integrating a set of action in an app, the LLM should just be the text parser. Assistant was already doing enough machine learning stuff to handle text commands, nothing there is fundamentally different.
So yeah, I’m confused by how much Gemini sucks at things that have nothing to do with its chatbotty stuff, and if Google is going to start phasing out Assistant I sure hope they fix those parts at least. I use Assistant for note taking almost exclusively (because frankly, who cares about interacting with your phone using voice for anything else, barring perhaps a quick search). Gemini has one job and zero reasons why it can’t do it. And it still really can’t do it.
LLMs on their own are not a viable replacement for assistants because you need a working assistant core to integrate with other services. LLM layer on top of assistants for better handling of natural language prompts is what I imagined would happen. What Gemini is doing seems ridiculous but I guess that’s Google developing multiple competing products again.
It is a replacement for a specific portion of a very complicated ecosystem-wide integration involving a ton of interoperability sandwiched between the natural language bits. Why this is a new product and not an Assistant overhaul is anybody’s guess. Some blend of complicated technical issues and corporate politics, I bet.
- Convert voice to text.
- Pre-parse vs voice command library of commands. If there are, do them, pass confirmation and jump to 6.
- If no valid commands, then pass to LLM.
- have LLM heavily trained on commands and some API output for them. If none, then other responses
- have response checked for API outputs, handle them appropriately and send confirmation forward, otherwise pass on output.
- Convert to voice.
The LLM part obviously also needs all kinds of sanitation on both sides like they do now, but exact commands should preempt the LLM entirely, if you’re insisting on using one.
It’s time to start calling it something else. Google is dead.
Was it ever truly alive? Yes. For one magical summer.
It’s the normal corporate lifecycle. Founders build it up. Workers expand it. Suits take over to monetize everything. A private equity firms squeezes the last live out of it.
But the Nexus 4 was released in the fall?
If you have a Pixel, just put GrapheneOS on it and you won’t ever have to deal with Google’s proprietary bullshit again
Do bank apps work ok on GrapheneOS?
Nope. I just do my banking stuff on my computer instead.
You might have some luck if you use Google Play services, but they often check if you have a custom ROM and bail if you do.
I wouldn’t give such a general statement. It really depends on your bank. There’s a very handy list at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/
Fair. I thought about linking that, but so many of them either require Google Play services, at least in the US, which kind of kills half the point of using GrapheneOS in the first place.
If you’re fine with sandboxed Google Play, then yeah, there’s a chance. If you’re not (e.g. you install via Aurora), then it’s incredibly unlikely your bank will work. Looks like US Bank works w/o it though?
which kind of kills half the point of using GrapheneOS in the first place
Absolutely not. Google Play services are much less invasive on GrapheneOS compared to other ROMs or the stock OS, since they run in the normal Android app sandbox, just like any other app you install. You can control all permissions, and uninstall them at any time. They do not get any special privileges, as it would be the case when running stock Android. You can also confine Play services in a separate user profile or in a work profile through an app like Shelter (user profiles offer better isolation).
If you’re not (e.g. you install via Aurora), then it’s incredibly unlikely your bank will work.
As I said, it highly depends on your specific bank. My bank in Germany works totally fine on GrapheneOS without Play Services. YMMV. That’s why I linked to that list.
You can use this list to check if you’re bank’s app is compatible
So they replaced a useless and invasive “assistant” with a new shinier useless and invasive “assistant”.
Just a reminder that all interactions with the “assistant” are saved in Google’s archives in perpetuity.
Additionally, that info will be used to inform ads the Google serves to you across its ad delivering products.
Felt like that goes without saying but yes.
They should have just merged the two products. Instead of coming up with Gemini, they could have added LLM features to the Assistant. On a Samsung phone, you now have Bixby, Assistant and Gemini lol.
I can’t set a reminder. It was all I used the damn thing for before.
Google set a reminder
Nope now it won’t Whats the point ugh
I can’t set a reminder.
I said “Hey Google, set a reminder to feed the dog at 9am tomorrow” and it seems to work fine?
More and more you all prove to me that you don’t actually use the products.
laughs in Graphene OS
My next phone probably will be a pixel just so that I can use GrapheneOS
