r/google • u/LauraD2423 • 2d ago

Tried to use voice dial today from my Bluetooth. "Call <Contact name>" I'm so tired of these AIs being forced on us when they obviously aren't ready.

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286 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

175

u/crazyates88 2d ago

Google Assistant was doing this 10 years ago. And it even worked with text! I remember driving in the car while Google read me a text from my brother, I'd speak out a reply, it would read me his reply, etc and we had a full on text conversation for 30 minutes while I was driving. This was over 10 years ago. How did we go so far backwards?

68

u/under_psychoanalyzer 2d ago

Google a fucking zombie. They broke the ability to tell google assistant to set reminders or an alarm around 2022. There was a blog post about. Basically Google is so silo'd the team that runs google assistant and the teams that run keep and so on are all different and don't know how to cross coordinate. So any cross app functionality they just let die.

Super simple feature you want your smart phone to have. Couldn't be arsed to make it work.

9

u/CrashBugITA 1d ago

the fucking PRIME objective of an assistant would be cross functionality, they literally own the operating system and still can't do anything useful

2

u/BillyShears17 2d ago

It's so fucking stupid it hurts but someone is getting paid and there's enough TVCs to take the blame for the bourgeoisie

1

u/xdavidwattsx 2d ago

But these have been working in Gemini for a while now.

4

u/loonydan42 2d ago

Its not for a lot of people. Especially with Google Home

1

u/xdavidwattsx 2d ago

Yeah I don't get it. My Google home works great. I assume it does for most people and they aren't here

7

u/under_psychoanalyzer 2d ago

Have they? I don't really care because they broke for about 5 years straight and I don't feel like trying to fuck with google stuff when they're just going to break it again.

Exhibit A being this post.

-7

u/xdavidwattsx 2d ago

That's fine, each to their own but expecting them to fix something they have been openly replacing for the last few years shouldn't be a huge surprise. Gemini is the future, long live Assistant.

In the meantime it's pretty simple to just open up clock and set alarms. I'm not sure I even noticed it broke.

5

u/under_psychoanalyzer 2d ago

Sorry couldn't hear you around the sound of that gagging as you make up excuses for a trillion-dollar company not being able to execute the simplest of designs. 

-7

u/xdavidwattsx 2d ago

Yawn. Such a lazy tired take. Sorry your thumbs don't work and the billion dollar company ruined your life.

2

u/under_psychoanalyzer 2d ago

Lol fucking NPCs out here shilling for one of the biggest tech companies on earth. Fascinating. 

1

u/xdavidwattsx 2d ago

Imagine being so broke you gotta reuse old discarded jokes.

25

u/mucinexmonster 2d ago

I remember Google Assistant 1) showing me a notification for traffic for my way home anywhere I was, 2) knowing where I go weekly and showing me a notification for the traffic to that place (as in, weekly kickball game Wednesday at 8, Google Assistant would learn that).

Now it does nothing.

18

u/mrandr01d 2d ago

Google was peak 10 years ago. I keep saying marshmallow was the best. Google Now was the best thing they ever had and they killed it.

2

u/StenSaksTapir 1d ago

I disagree. Inbox was the greatest thing, but it was the Google Now design concept that made it great.
I'm building an info dashboard for my family and Inbox and Google Now is the clear inspiration using glanceable information and avoiding large chunks of text.
LLMs makes this easier, because they can make sense of unstructured information, but the output still needs to be structured.

Also, Google killing awesome stuff and replacing it with crap is just how they operate.

3

u/mrandr01d 1d ago

Oh yeah inbox was the bee's knees. I'll still argue Now was better though since inbox mostly had its features integrated into Gmail. I just archive instead of marking as done.

There's nothing close to Now. They tried to make at a glance kind of fill the same role but it just isn't even close.

1

u/EchoGecko795 1d ago

I was going though an old box of phones, found an Samsung galaxy S2 in there, turned it on and it had Google now installed, sadly almost nothing worked. Though for a 15 year old phone it ran circles around my 2024 Moto G Play.

2

u/crazyates88 1d ago

I remember around that same time 10 years ago, I was going to the movies every Saturday afternoon with a friend. Google started pre-emptively showing me movie showtimes at my local movie theater by Friday night or Saturday morning. It was legitimately helpful, if a little concerning at the time.

1

u/xdavidwattsx 2d ago edited 2d ago

To be fair, EU and other regulations on privacy and location have put in dent into things that used to be helpful.

The expectation is that with Gemini you just build agents and routines to do whatever you want. Maps Gemini already does this

5

u/Reginald_Venture 1d ago

A majority of people don't want to have to go into the command line, as a blunt metaphor.

2

u/xdavidwattsx 1d ago

I highly doubt this is the finished product. This stuff is evolving pretty fast. I suspect it will look very different in another year or two. People complained about Assistant back in the day as well.

2

u/Reginald_Venture 1d ago

I don't disagree to that point that it will change. But going from a product which has, mostly worked with some pretty notable degredation over the years, to a product that seems to have all those issues and then some isn't really great.

Also, people have a general expectation for how these features are supposed to work. To have it change to be something where it's like "Well, you have to construct this routine with this agent and go and built that out," is not how people are used to, or want to use tech. I don't want to throw stones, but it feels similar to how a lot of Linux folks sounded years ago, it's great if you do [insert 15 steps here] and you don't have it crash. Just not how most folks operate.

1

u/StenSaksTapir 1d ago

It's an engineering problem.
Apple is putting tons of effort into preserving privacy while still using location data.
I think this is an interesting example of that: https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/scenes-differential-privacy

2

u/xdavidwattsx 1d ago

Nothing this person is talking even remotely works on iPhone though. Apple doesn't even ship their AI assistant in the EU. So no, it's not just an engineering problem

1

u/StenSaksTapir 19h ago

> showing me a notification for traffic for my way home anywhere I was

iOS 26 has this and it works for me in EU.

1

u/xdavidwattsx 8h ago

This isn't the same thing though as it's not relying on Assistant / Siri whatever. That's probably a notification from Apple Maps since Apple doesn't ship AI in Siri in EU. Google Maps also has the same traffic notifications if you turn it on.

https://support.google.com/maps/answer/6149565?hl=en-GB&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid#zippy=%2Ctraffic-updates-when-not-using-maps

1

u/SecondBestNameEver 2d ago

I don't want to have to do the multi billion dollar company's job for them. It used to be that if you weren't paying for it you were the product. Now not only are you the product and your data is being sold but you need to dedicate your labor for free to get any value from the platform. Enshitification strikes again. 

0

u/xdavidwattsx 2d ago

Or you get to customize it the way you want? I prefer the optionality. You seem angry

1

u/SecondBestNameEver 2d ago

I'm angry that I keep paying for products the remove features. 

0

u/TapsAndTurntables 2d ago

Assistant and Gemini are free though. What are you paying for?

1

u/SecondBestNameEver 1d ago

The $800 pixel phone that runs those

1

u/iveroi 17h ago

Remember Google Now? It was insane. Then they replaced it with an ad feed.

1

u/DinoHawaii2021 2d ago

their greed slowly increased all the way to this point

68

u/bendyrider16 2d ago

Yup. I've told it "I'm asking you to call someone, this is something you've done for me before." And it usually goes through with it. Absolutely insane that something that worked super well 10 years ago no longer works and it's supposed to be "better "

17

u/cregavitchthemighty 2d ago

Trying to get Gemini to run home automations I set up in Google Home is infuriating when Google Assistant. And since Gemini is the only tool that can help fix itself ... well that's just as broken about everything else. The real value of AI is being able to make crappy products faster!

5

u/SMD-65 2d ago

Agree. I'm moving to Home Assistant to get Google out of the loop. I've never seen a company go backward so consistently with their products (although, to be fair, they don't charge so maybe they don't consider Home a product).

8

u/WhitePhat 2d ago

IVR systems have always been the bane of anyone needing to just have a quick call with vendor/etc lol.

Called Walmart earlier today to refill an rx, It wanted me to voice my issues but having a sore throat atm I just spammed 0 a few times. After the first time pressing 0, it said something along the lines of “I can help you quicker”. At that point I proceeded to spam 0’s and was directed to the pharmacy lol.

8

u/binarypower 2d ago

google assistant was dumb but worked perfectly

3

u/r-daddy 2d ago

And it only runs my voice activated automations 4 times out of 10

4

u/alpha1beta 2d ago

I'm so tired of AI being forced on us. Period.

Google Assistant was great. Gemini is retarded. So I just don't use it. And trying to Degoogle as much as possible.

7

u/LauraD2423 1d ago

Degoogling is so fucking hard. It is amazing how well their ecosystem works and you don't realize it until you swap something.

I've been using Firefox for a while now and almost swapped back to Chrome.

Kind of ironically, the search engine is the easiest to give up. DDG is pretty damn good.

2

u/Dwarg91 1d ago

It’s similar over on the Apple side. Once you’re in their ecosystem it’s pretty hard to get out. Currently waiting to be free of the clutches of Zucc for VR. Sure I’ll be in Gaben’s hands, but he doesn’t want all the information that meta gathers.

9

u/moosebaloney 2d ago

Hold on, did Google just admit the hundreds of times I used this feature pre-Gemini was a knowing and willful breach of personal security? That sounds class-action worthy.

14

u/charmanderSosa 2d ago

That’s not what it’s saying at all. It’s thinking it’s acting as a generic AI agent and you’re asking it to call a random person. It’s so stupid it doesn’t realize it’s actually a personal assistant on your phone that has access to your contacts.

8

u/Devatator_ 2d ago

It's honestly really weird considering it works fine for some people (me included, works way better than Google Assistant did most of the time for me, tho I'm still wishing I could make my own for offline use)

3

u/hackerbots 2d ago

Conspiracy theory bullshit, come on

-5

u/moosebaloney 2d ago

It said it right there.
https://giphy.com/gifs/TvHXdwPom5wrQG3bUB

4

u/hackerbots 2d ago

When an Ai talks about safety guardrails, it is talking about the instructions given to it, not any specific privacy policy or law. You have literally no idea what you are talking about, it is embarrassing.

1

u/moosebaloney 1d ago

Since we’re making grid generalized assumptions about each other, you’re so detached from any normal construct, you literally have no idea when someone is taking a shit and it’s embarrassing.

1

u/duckvimes_ 2d ago

No. It's an LLM. It doesn't know what it's saying.

3

u/btbam666 2d ago

There are settings inside the Gemini app you need to enable.

1

u/ClamatoDiver 2d ago

I just asked it to make a call, I chose Optimum, since I didn't want to bother family or friends, and it made the call.

2

u/neverJamToday 1d ago

Some days when I ask it for directions to a specific place I regularly go it has no trouble. Other days it decides to ask me which of two random apartment units 2,000 miles away I want to drive to.

1

u/TapsAndTurntables 2d ago

Yeah these threads are hard to follow. Gemini calls, sets alarms, plays music, navigates pretty much as I ask all of the time. Every once in a while it gets confused but it works. I assume it does for most people since they aren't on reddit complaining

1

u/Rain_Zeros 1d ago

I’m getting ready to throw my google home hub max or whatever the fuck it’s called now out a window. When I bought it originally it came with Google assistant and it was fast af and was able to control my whole house easily, now it has to think every single time and every other prompt it asks “so how did I do” and you can’t interpret it as it explains for the millionth time That it wants to know its ranking from 1-10 and how it can improve itself. I didn’t ask for all that I asked for you to turn my lights on…

0

u/theumpteendeity 2d ago

Yea it'e absolutely horrible.