From TechCrunch · Sarah Perez · · 1m 30s
Google kills Gemini Gems for skills feature
Google is shutting down Gemini's Gems custom AI assistants and converting them to skills that work across different tasks.
In brief
Google is shutting down Gemini's Gems custom AI assistants and converting them to skills that work across different tasks. Google is replacing its Gemini Gems feature with skills starting November seventeenth, twenty twenty-six, automatically migrating user-created custom AI assistants to the new format. Originally…
Google shuts down Gemini Gems
Google is killing its Gemini Gems feature, which let users build custom AI assistants for specific tasks. The work won't be lost. Gems will automatically migrate to skills usable across different AI tasks.
Migration starts November seventeenth
Google is warning users in the Gemini app that Gems will become skills starting on November seventeenth, twenty twenty-six. The company will migrate Gems automatically, so users won't need to do anything.
What Gems did for users
Launched in twenty twenty-four, Gems helped users teach their AI to perform certain tasks without repeating instructions. Google's premade Gems included a learning coach, brainstorming assistant, career guide, coding partner, and editor. Users could create custom Gems and share them.
Google's branding problem
The shutdown shows Google's tendency to give every new AI feature its own brand name, icon, and app placement, then shuffle things around by merging features. This pattern has plagued Google's strategy long before the AI era.
Skills less user-friendly than rivals
Even as skills, the former Gems won't be as consumer-friendly as typing text to a chatbot like Meta's Muse. Users will have to enter a forward slash to select the skill they want, a user interface engineers prefer over regular people.
The big picture
Google is replacing its Gemini Gems feature with skills starting November seventeenth, twenty twenty-six, automatically migrating user-created custom AI assistants to the new format.
