AI Open Guide
← Gemini · Start here

1In one sentence

Gemini is Google's AI helper: you type (or say) a question in normal words and it answers, writes, reads your files, searches the web, and makes pictures, and it is built into the Google things you may already use.

2New words

  • AI — short for "artificial intelligence". A program that learned from a huge amount of text how to understand and write language. It is not a person; it is very good with words.
  • Gemini — the name Google gives both to its AI and to the app you use it in. The app is at gemini.google.com and on phones.
  • Prompt — the message you type to Gemini. Every question or instruction is a prompt.
  • Chat — one conversation, from your first message to your last. You can have many.
  • Google account — the login you use for Gmail or YouTube. The same login opens Gemini.

3Why you would want it

If you already live in Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, YouTube and Chrome, Gemini is the AI that can sit inside all of them. It answers questions, drafts emails, summarizes long documents, explains hard things simply, makes images, and (where Google offers it, not yet in Europe) can read your own email and calendar to help with your real life. You do not need a new account or a new password to start.

4Try it now

  1. Open your web browser and go to gemini.google.com.
  2. Sign in with your Google account (the one you use for Gmail). If you have none, create one; it is free.
  3. You will see a mostly empty page with a box in the middle that says something like "Ask Gemini".
  4. Type exactly this: Explain in 5 simple lines what you can do for someone who has never used you before.
  5. Press Enter.

5What you will see

First, the empty page with the box where you type:

The empty Gemini page with the "Ask Gemini" box
The empty Gemini page with the "Ask Gemini" box

Then, after a few seconds, five short lines in plain words, with small buttons under the answer (copy, thumbs up and down, and a "Sources" button when it looked something up on the web):

Gemini's first five-line answer
Gemini's first five-line answer

Notice that you can simply reply to it as if you were texting.

6Watch out

  • Gemini sounds sure of itself even when it is wrong. For anything important (a price, a law, a dose, a date), check elsewhere. Chapter 1.17 shows how.
  • On a work or school Google account, your administrator may have switched Gemini off or limited it. If the page says you cannot use it, that is why, not a mistake on your side.

7Go further

Reply with: Now give one example of each for a person who runs a small bakery. Then read Chapter 1.2 to see all the places Gemini lives.

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Where Gemini lives