Gemini has always been a strong contender as an AI, and it has some features that you simply won’t find in other chatbots. If you haven’t looked at what Gemini has to offer for a while it’s worth giving it another try, especially if you have an Android or Pixel phone.
To give you a reason to venture beyond ChatGPT I’m bigging up three of my favorite features that are unique to Gemini – so if you’d like to check out the powers of Gemini I’d recommend starting by taking a look at these.
Remember, you don’t need to be an Android user to make use of Gemini’s features – they work in the Gemini app on all platforms, and on the web at gemini.google.com
As with ChatGPT, there’s a basic version of Gemini that you can use for free, but there are also paid plans. The naming conventions are a little different between ChatGPT and Gemini. A Gemini Pro account costs $20 / £18.99 a month, so it’s roughly equivalent to the ChatGPT Plus account, but also comes with 2TB of storage. Gemini also has an AI Ultra plan that’s the rough equivalent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Pro plan.
Let’s look at those three key Gemini features that I think you’ll love too…
1. Storybooks
I love Gemini’s Storybooks. Using one simple prompt you can create a cute storybook for kids in a few seconds. Being a jiu-jitsu enthusiast I typed in: “Using a Claymation art style, create a storybook about a new kids first day at a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class and how he had a great time, to help my kid lose his fear of going.” Gemini very quickly made this beautiful storybook, which looks unbelievably cute.
You can flick through the pages, and even have it read to you by Gemini. If you look closely you’ll see the occasional bit of AI weirdness, like three pigtails on the girl in the image below, for example, but it’s doubtful that your kids would notice.
It’s possible to use Storybooks for more grown-up stories too, but they work best for kids’ stories. You can have great fun choosing characters and plot lines with your kids when you’re creating them too.
Just click on Storybooks under the Gems section of the menu to give it a go. While there are custom GPT storybook generators in ChatGPT, it doesn’t have a feature that looks as nice as Gemini’s, with the page-turning reading experience and the listen ability.
2. Audio Overviews
If you need to learn about a topic quickly then Audio Overviews is the best way I’ve found to do it.
Audio Overviews take the form of a podcast-style conversation between two hosts, a male and a female character, who draw out all the key points of whatever information source you feed into it. So instead of having to spend ages reading the source documents, you can just sit back and listen to the key points being explained to you.
Originally launched as part of NotebookLM, Google’s suite of tools for learning academic subjects, you can also create Audio Overviews in Gemini.
To do so simply click the + icon and select Upload files. Choose a text or PDF file that contains the relevant information, or multiple files. Gemini will then ask you if you’d like to Generate Audio Overview. Just click this and Gemini will start to generate the Audio Overview, and you can listen to it when it’s ready.
Audio Overviews are genuinely useful – and ChatGPT hasn’t got anything like it.
3. AI video with matching sound
A Gemin Pro account gives you the ability to make three Veo 3 videos a day, which come with sound. In fact, you can script a little sketch an AI-generated video of characters saying your words. For example I clicked on Tools then Videos with Veo and typed in the following prompt:
A man and a woman having a conversation:
Him: “Have you heard about Gemini?”
Her: “The star sign?”
Him: “No, the new AI from Google.”
Her: “Oh that? I think we’re in it!”
You can watch the video this generated for yourself. You’ll notice that Veo 3 has matched the audio perfectly to their lip movements, and even has them expressing appropriate emotions.
OpenAI has Sora for video generation, but it can’t do what Veo 3 just did there, and have the characters lip-sync to the words you’ve written.
Overall, these three features make Gemini a fun and productive tool for day-to-day use, and show that while ChatGPT may be the most popular AI at the moment, it isn’t the top dog in all areas.
