People with Gemini zodiac sign have the problem of creeping.
A few years ago, that little shiny icon started appearing in all of our Google apps. Gemini in your inbox! Gemini in your Google Drive! It was slow in the beginning and was fairly easy to fix, but something has changed in the last few months. Gemini is crawling. It’s appearing at a constant rate in all kinds of places, and personally, it’s really starting to bother me.
AI-everywhere fatigue is familiar to anyone who has ever used Windows 11. Microsoft tried its best to put CoPilot shortcuts on every surface, which became extremely frustrating for many users. Likewise, we’ll undoubtedly hear about all kinds of new Gemini features at this week’s Google I/O conference, and I’m praying that Google has learned from Microsoft’s mistakes as it releases them on our workspace apps. Nobody likes creeps.
I’m also someone who really enjoys Gemini. I used it to vibe-code an app to track what tasks I have time for in a given day. I chat with Gemini on each of my Android phones and I’ve started downloading the app on the iPhone as well. This could put me in, like, the top 10 percent of Gemini users who don’t work at Google. I’ve also noticed that Google places an AI overview at the top of every search result these days. Sure, there were the early days of glue on your pizza. And they’re possibly contributing to the death of the open web. But lately when the risk is less I am finding them quite reliable. I would Google how often to water my lavender plants, or how long to cook potato wedges at 400 degrees; So far AI observations haven’t destroyed my lavender or overcooked my potatoes.
But everyone has their limits, and I think Gemini’s latest foray into Google Docs is when I reached mine. It’s a permanent glowing icon at the bottom of the window, and if you make the mistake of hovering over it, you’ll get a full toolbar with suggested prompts for Gemini to write for you. blogging is mine craftThank you very much, so I stopped that nonsense immediately. Now, even those Gemini signs I was able to tune into before are starting to bother me. I think at some point I allowed Chrome to put the Gemini shortcut in the menu bar at the top of my MacBook homescreen, because there’s a little glow in there staring at me all the time. When did this happen? Was I cheated? It’s all like Haley Joel Osment Sixth sense. They are everywhere.
And then there’s the matter of AI as a threat to the developer community – you know, the people Google addresses at I/O. Tech companies are laying off software engineers, saying they don’t need as many warm bodies as AI coding tools get better. I’m not sure you’ll be much of a relief when Gemini offers to help you write your cover letter when you’re applying to jobs currently being destroyed by AI.
All of this is before considering that companies like Google aren’t winning themselves any popularity contests as they push to build massive data centers across the country. But even without knowing all this, constantly nagging people to adopt devices they don’t want is a bad user experience. I expect this kind of behavior from a Meta app, not some software I use for work. I don’t want to “ask Gmail” when I open my inbox, I want to type three keywords and find the email I’m looking for. I don’t want Gemini to interact with my Chrome tab. I don’t want to “learn the highs and lows” of a folder in my Google Drive. When I find AI tools useful I want them. Otherwise, I just want to keep this out there, and I don’t think I’m alone.
Photography by Alison Johnson/The Verge
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