Google Removes Gemini From Google App for iOS Devices

Google removed its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant Gemini from the Google app for iOS devices, telling customers they can access the AI assistant by downloading the Gemini app from the App Store.

The company delivered the news to customers in an email, TechCrunch reported Wednesday (Feb. 19).

Customers who try to access Gemini through the Google app will see a message saying, “Gemini now has its own app,” together with links to the App Store, according to the report.

Shifting customers to the Gemini app will allow Google to more directly compete with ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and other consumer-facing AI chatbots, per the report.

However, the company risks losing Gemini users by taking the feature away from the millions of users of the Google app and requiring them to download another app, the report said.

Google rolled out its Gemini app for the iPhone in November, saying the AI app lets users access the Gemini Live voice assistant, its premium image generator, and links to other with other Google services such as YouTube and Gmail in single conversations.

The company’s rollout of the Gemini iPhone app marked another move by tech companies to capture mainstream users seeking AI tools for everyday tasks on their phones, PYMNTS reported in November.

Companies are racing to convert casual users into paying subscribers through features like chatbots, photo editing and writing assistance.

“One good thing about AI-powered apps is their ability to create personalized experiences,” Dmytro Tymoshenko, CEO of Noiz, which creates AI-powered summaries of YouTube videos, told PYMNTS at the time. “AI is able to analyze data at a very high speed, which allows it to, for instance, recommend content based on user preferences quite fast.”

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said during an October earnings call that AI drives user engagement and growth.

“It’s one of the most positive user satisfaction launches we have done in search and it is increasing overall search usage,” Pichai said. “People are asking more complex questions, different types of questions. They are exploring a wider range of websites. And what’s particularly exciting is that this growth actually increases over time as people learn to adapt to that new behavior.”