Author of this article: Li Dan.

The weather is good today The weather is good today.

Apple's Siri was just starting to prepare for integration with ChatGPT, but Google quietly entered Apple's App Store, and iPhone users can now use Google's AI assistant Gemini.

On Thursday, November 14, Eastern Time, Google's AI chatbot Gemini App for iOS was launched on Apple's App Store, currently ranking 37th in the productivity App category. This free app only displays a chat window and a chat history list. iPhone users can ask Gemini questions via text, voice, or camera and get answers.

The iOS version of the Gemini App supports question prompts in 35 languages, and users can interact with Gemini in 12 languages using the Gemini Live feature in the app, including English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic, Italian, Indonesian, Japanese, Turkish, and Vietnamese. Google plans to soon introduce support for more languages.

The iOS version of the Gemini App and the Gemini App on Google's App Store, as well as the version accessible on the Gemini website, have some of the same features. For example, users can ask for recipe recommendations or seek help with learning. However, Gemini Live is a new feature of the iOS version of the App. It makes Gemini's chats more interactive, with stronger conversational nature, similar to ChatGPT's voice mode.

Google launched Gemini Live for Android phones a few weeks ago, which is the first time this feature is available for iPhone users. The Verge's contributing editor David Pierce said he did some brief tests that showed Gemini Live runs very well on the iPhone. When using this feature, it will display simultaneously on the iPhone's dynamic island and lock screen.

Perce believes that the entire point of the Gemini App is to have its icon placed on the user's main screen, becoming a point that users can assign to operation buttons or quickly access on their phones. With just a light press, in half a second, users can chat with the Gemini robot. For any company wishing to cultivate a habit of chatting with robots among users, this access and the muscle memory it helps build are crucial.

Of course, like all other non-Siri chatbots, Gemini has some significant limitations on the iPhone – users cannot change settings or access other apps while using it. However, it can access other Google apps, which remains a major advantage of Gemini.

For example, users can ask Gemini for information related to their Google accounts in Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Calendar among others. When users request Gemini to play music, it can launch YouTube Music; when asked for directions, it can show users Google Maps. This reflects part of Google's goal with the Android system and Apple's goal with Siri: using AI to make all content on smartphones more interactive and accessible. If users do not use AI chatbots, this goal cannot be achieved, so Apple and Google will compete for the users' main screens.

According to the iOS version of the Gemini App description, users can also generate images through Google's text-to-image model Imagen 3, implying it can be used to generate previously controversial character images. Because iPhone users can try Google's most powerful AI model, Gemini Advanced, for free for a month. If users have subscribed to Gemini Advanced, they can access this model directly within the app.

In February of this year, Google's Gemini text-to-image tool was criticized for generating images of people that were not factually accurate. Netizens on the social media X, originally named Twitter, criticized Gemini for openly 'altering history.' Some requested images of American founding fathers and medieval English kings, only to see figures of black individuals. Others requested images of German soldiers during World War II in 1943, with some soldiers generated by Gemini appearing as Asian or African descent.

Google had to decide to take offline the function of generating character images, stating that the issue partly stemmed from the model becoming "much more cautious than we expected" over time, misinterpreting some harmless prompts as sensitive words. It wasn't until the end of August that Google started allowing users of the Gemini Advanced, Business, and Enterprise versions to re-enable the function of creating character images.

It is worth mentioning that in the public beta version of iOS 18.2 released by Apple last week, Siri has integrated ChatGPT. This means that all iPhone users will be able to use Siri powered by ChatGPT in the coming weeks. The new showdown between Gemini and ChatGPT is about to begin on the iPhone.