I'll be watching Gemini Live will learn to peer through your camera lens in a few weeks Google's Project Astra demo is almost ready for prime time. Ryan Whitwam Mar 3, 2025 12:14 pm | 26 Credit: Google Credit: Google Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAt Mobile World Congress, Google confirmed that a long-awaited Gemini AI feature it first teased nearly a year ago is ready for launch. The company's conversational Gemini Live will soon be able to view live video and screen sharing, a feature Google previously demoed as Project Astra. When Gemini's video capabilities arrive, you'll be able to simply show the robot something instead of telling it.Right now, Google's multimodal AI can process text, images, and various kinds of documents. However, its ability to accept video as an input is spotty at bestsometimes it can summarize a YouTube video, and sometimes it can't, for unknown reasons. Later in March, the Gemini app on Android will get a major update to its video functionality. You'll be able to open your camera to provide Gemini Live a video stream or share your screen as a live video, thus allowing you to pepper Gemini with questions about what it sees. Gemini Live with video. It can be hard to keep track of which Google AI project is whichthe 2024 Google I/O was largely a celebration of all things Gemini AI. The Astra demo made waves as it demonstrated a more natural way to interact with the AI. In the original video, which you can see below, Google showed how Gemini Live could answer questions in real time as the user swept a phone around a room. It had things to say about code on a computer screen, how speakers work, and a network diagram on a whiteboard. It even remembered where the user left their glasses from an earlier part of the video.We don't yet know if the version of this technology that's coming to the Gemini app will be as capable as Google's clearly staged I/O demo. However, Google is talking a big game in advance of Gemini Live's upgrade. The company claims this update to the Gemini 2.0 platform will finally make Gemini a "true assistant." Google suggests you could use Gemini Live's video chops to have an informative conversation with the robot while you explore new places or get help with piecing together an outfit by sharing your screen while online shopping. Gemini Live with screen sharing. The more powerful Gemini Live will arrive on Android phones in the Gemini app later this month. Piping a continuous stream of video into the model is undoubtedly going to consume much more processing than churning through some text. The video features will be part of Gemini Advanced, so you'll need to be on the $20 per month AI Premium plan. That subscription also provides access to Google's largest and most expensive AI models. The Project Astra demo from I/O 2024. Even with the subscription requirements, Gemini Live will probably lose Google even more money with this update. No company has cracked the code on making money from generative AI just yet. Adding video to the mix will only deepen Google's losses on each user, but this is the kind of feature that could get people to use Gemini more. Securing market share versus the likes of OpenAI is seemingly worth the short-term loss. Despite Google's enormous mobile footprint, its monthly Gemini usage numbers are only in the tens of millions, which is an order of magnitude lower than OpenAI's tools.Ryan WhitwamSenior Technology ReporterRyan WhitwamSenior Technology Reporter Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he's written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards. 26 Comments