gemini’s arrival on google tV Portends a more accessible TV Experience for All Viewers
Google last week announced Gemini is coming to Google TV as one’s “conversational assistant to help you find content to watch on the big screen.” The new feature was detailed in a blog post written by Shalini GovilPai, Google’s vice president of Google TV.
“The TV is the heart of the home—the place where we gather, cheer and connect. For years, Google TV has made it easy to find great entertainment, and Google Assistant has helped TVs do more just by voice, from getting recommendations to dimming the lights,” GovilPai wrote in the lede. “Today, we’re introducing Gemini for TV. Everything you already do with Google Assistant still works, but Gemini on Google TV goes beyond simple commands and lets you engage in free-flowing conversations with your big screen. Get help finding the perfect show for whatever mood you’re in, brainstorm a family trip or answer complex homework questions. Just say ‘Hey Google’ or press the microphone button on your TV remote to unlock a new world of possibilities.”
Amongst the many examples GovilPai gives for using Gemini on the big screen involves one of my favorite shows in The Pitt on HBO Max. She notes people can ask Gemini questions such as ‘What’s the new hospital drama everyone’s talking about?’ and follow-up with queries like ‘What are the reviews for The Pitt?’ Gemini’s user interface manifests itself as a horizontal search bar at the bottom of Google TV’s home screen.
The news comes after Google TV’s aforementioned home screen received a redesign.
I’ve written copiously about my bullishness over Gemini on my iPhone for accessibility, but it has relevance to televisions too. To GovilPai’s point about surfacing content based on vague, open-ended questions, it could be more accessible for someone with certain cognitive conditions to find shows like The Pitt because they needn’t be so precise in asking for what they want. As the artificially intelligent agent, Gemini is capable of inferring that the “new hospital drama everyone’s talking about” quite certainly could be The Pitt. This type of functionality only enriches the accessibility of the Google experience for things like, for instance, controlling one’s smart home setup, as well as Google TV’s content-centric software design—of which I’m already a big fan for accessibility reasons. All told, Gemini vastly improves Google TV’s value proposition, making it a solid choice for one’s home theater if accessibility and ease of use means more to you than, say, hardware and software performance and ecosystem amenities.
Gemini is now available on TCL’s new high-end QM9K set, and will come to the QM7K, QM8K, and X11K models later this year. In addition, streaming boxes such as Google’s own Google TV Streamer and Walmart’s Onn 4K Pro—which I briefly reviewed back in early August—will receive Gemini in an update “later this year,” according to GovilPai.
