If you'd come to me a few months ago and asked me what my biggest pet peeve with my Google Pixel Watch 3 was, I'd have probably said something like how finicky it is to charge. But right after that, it would have been the fact that its voice commands still ran on Google Assistant while my Pixel 9 Pro ran on Gemini.
Considering that Assistant and Gemini both have the same wake-up word, that led to some awkward situations. Asking my watch to do something almost always led to my phone picking up what I was saying, and meant I had two devices trying to compete for my attention.
I thought having Gemini on my Pixel Watch would help solve this issue — but that seems to have been wishful thinking.
Assistants need to work together more seamlessly
Just the other day, I was doing... something, I don't really remember what, but I wanted to use my watch and Gemini to set a timer.
Despite the fact that I had the watch about an inch from my mouth, speaking into it secret agent style, it never actually responded to what I was saying.
What I didn't know at that time was that my phone, which was two rooms over, had picked up what I'd said and put the timer on. All while I had manually activated Gemini on my wrist and set up an identical timer to make up for the fact that the AI apparently didn't want to get up and do its job.
All the while, both these devices were connected via Bluetooth and no apparent issues with the connection.
And this got me wondering what the benefit of having Gemini on my watch actually is. Not only did it not connect to my wakeup command, but it wasn't able to communicate that my phone had done it instead.
It's a level of disconnect that should not be happening. Not only because it makes Gemini look bad, but also because the whole point of having these connected ecosystems is that our devices are supposed to be able to communicate with each other.
It's happened with Alexa, too, where I'm trying to get something done in the kitchen, and the Echo Show in my wife's office upstairs somehow picks up that I want something. So I end up with two Echos doing the exact same thing, seemingly unaware that I only wanted that playlist running in one room at a time.
Smart home AI need to be smarter
I don't use voice assistants very often, instead preferring to do things myself and avoid any issues like I've just described. But there are times when using your hands just doesn't work, and voice commands are all you have.
Then situations like this happen, and it makes you wonder why you bothered in the first place.
People use voice assistants to control their smart home every day without issue. But these systems have now been in place for long enough that they should be able to work a little more seamlessly across devices. Whether it's an old-school voice assistant interface or an AI chatbot, different devices capable of running a single system should be able to gauge where you are and how best to interact with you.
In an ideal world, different assistants would be able to communicate and act accordingly, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Certainly not when they're all trying to become the biggest and best AI company there is.
But I would happily settle for my phone to stop getting confused and trying to complete tasks I'm asking my watch to perform.
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