I hated Gemini on my phone – until the lights went out

As I’m writing this, the carpet in my home office is covered with bicarbonate of soda. I’ve dabbed at it with paper towels and then applied some warm, soapy water. In a few hours, I’ll vacuum it all away, and it’ll hopefully be good as new. (Edit: it was.)

Why am I telling you this? Tempting as it might be, I haven’t decided to start conducting weird chemistry experiments while I work.

I’m following the suggestions of Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, after disaster struck this morning. In a clumsy moment, I’d knocked my bergamot oil diffuser (which had been making WFH so pleasant this week) to the floor, sending essential oils spilling onto an otherwise spotless carpet.

Cue a rising sense of panic. I knew I had to do something fast, but I didn’t know what. I wouldn’t exactly put my cleaning abilities on par with Iwan from Sort Your Life Out.

The fastest solution seemed to be to ask Gemini, so that’s exactly what I did.

It might seem weird to be following the advice of a chatbot that’s been known to hallucinate, but Gemini had already earned its place in my stain-removing good books.

A few weeks ago, I’d noticed a stain on my sofa that was impossible to ignore. Anyone visiting would notice the dark splodge immediately, and previous attempts using upholstery cleaner had been unsuccessful.

I wouldn’t exactly put my cleaning abilities on par with Iwan from Sort Your Life Out

So, I took a quick snap of the lime green fabric and asked Gemini for cleaning advice. It returned in seconds with a simple five-step process that was very similar: dab, dish soap, bicarb, vacuum. It worked an absolute treat.

But these are just two of dozens of recent examples in which Google’s assistant has been a big help. Of course, I could go down the traditional route of a web search, but in a time of need, trawling through webpages is the last thing you want to do.

As a long-time AI sceptic, my near-daily use of Gemini as a problem-solving assistant is something I never expected. But it wasn’t until an altogether more serious situation struck around a month ago that my opinion on it finally shifted.

No power? No panic

In today’s technology-filled world, a power cut has severe consequences. Electricity underpins all our daily lives, so when your home loses power, it’s very bad news.

That became a reality a few weeks ago, when we returned to my parents’ home to discover that only some of the lights were working. Then, as we were figuring out what the problem was, all the power went off.

Swearing and panic swiftly followed. A freezing, dark home with no way of keeping food cold is the stuff of nightmares.

A freezing, dark home with no way of keeping food cold is the stuff of nightmares

To make matters worse, my parents had only moved in four months earlier, and this was the first time anything had gone wrong with the complex, outdated electricity system. There was no power cut in the local area and no signs of a blown fuse, so we were faced with the prospect of spending hundreds of pounds on an emergency Sunday call-out.

Desperate for an alternative, I turned to Gemini for advice. I’d begun using it for simple household tasks, but this was the highest-stakes situation by far. Within seconds of sending a photo of the consumer unit, it provided a simple, step-by-step way to identify and solve the issue.

While no guarantee of success, it helped quiet our catastrophising minds and focus on the problem at hand. In the end, a simple bulb replacement and adjusting the position of some switches did the trick.

Gemini didn’t provide the solution here – we found it inadvertently while trying one of its other suggestions – but without its help, we probably wouldn’t have tried to solve the problem ourselves. Instead, we could easily have been looking at a hefty bill and hours of Sunday stress.

An invaluable home helper

I’m not going to run through every scenario in which Gemini was helpful over the past few months, because you’d be bored to tears reading about it.

But the most useful area by far has been with simple tasks around the home. In the depths of winter, the radiator in my living room was barely heating up. Within minutes, Gemini had helped me fix the loose valve and return it to blazing-hot efficiency.

Making sense of the confusing smorgasbord of symbols on bowls, pans and my temperamental countertop dishwasher? Gemini to the rescue.

Getting started with my gardening journey and deciding on the optimal placement for a bird table? Google’s AI replaced confusion with clarity (though the bird seed has sat untouched for four days at the time of writing, so maybe it’s not foolproof).

Oh, and it also stopped me from using human shampoo on our dog’s muddy fur, which can cause serious irritation and other skin damage. My bad on that one.

An important word of warning

Despite all of Gemini’s helpful tips over the last few months, I’ll never be totally convinced that it has the right answers. And that’s exactly the way it should be.

While major errors are rare nowadays, Google’s AI can still get things wrong or hallucinate. For any suggestions it makes, I’ll only consider implementing the ones that have little to no risk of long-term damage. Even then, I’ll evaluate which ideas are worth banking and which should be disregarded.

In the AI era, critical thinking is more crucial than ever

As AI makes its way into ever-more areas of our lives, this rigour is non-negotiable. We should never blindly accept what AI tells us, or use it as a replacement for proper research practices.

I’m also very selective when it comes to AI use in my journalism. I’d never use it to help write an article like this, and still prefer to evaluate reporting on multiple sites before coming to any conclusions of my own. In the AI era, critical thinking is more crucial than ever.

The stakes aren’t quite as high when it comes to stubborn stains or recalcitrant radiators, though, so I’m happy to let a few of Gemini’s AI-powered skills into my life.

Well done, Google, you’ve successfully changed this AI sceptic’s mind on artificial intelligence. And it looks like I’m not the only one.

Gemini is built into many Android phones, but it’s available as a free app on all smartphones – including the iPhone. So, any of the models in our comprehensive guide to the best phones you can buy will be compatible.