At Made by Google 2025, the company announced Gemini for Home, its next-generation AI assistant designed to replace Google Assistant on Nest devices. Alongside the announcement, Google briefly showcased what appears to be a new first-party smart speaker, giving users a glimpse of the future of its smart home ecosystem.
Smarter Than Google Assistant
According to Google, Gemini for Home is “more powerful and easier to use” compared to the current Google Assistant. The upgrade comes from the advanced reasoning, inference, and search capabilities powered by Google’s most capable Gemini models. While the familiar “Hey Google” hotword remains the same, rigid voice commands are being replaced with more natural, complex, and conversational requests.
For example, users can now issue multi-step commands in one go, like ‘Dim the lights, and set the temp to 72 degrees’, and ‘Turn off the lights everywhere except my bedroom.’
This shows how Gemini can reason through context rather than follow a strict one-command-at-a-time format.
Smarter Everyday Tasks
Gemini for Home also improves calendar and list management, as well as timers, through natural language understanding. Commands like “add the ingredients to make an authentic Italian lasagna to my shopping list” or “set a timer for perfectly blanched broccoli” show off its ability to handle nuanced requests.
On the entertainment side, Gemini can fetch songs using conversational prompts like “play the song of the year winner from 1990” or “play that song from this year’s summer blockbuster about race cars.”
In addition, Gemini integrates conversational search capabilities. Users can ask real-world, context-based questions such as:
- What’s the healthiest dinner I can cook in under 30 minutes with chicken and spinach?”
- “Which budget-friendly hotels in Paris have good reviews and are close to the Eiffel Tower?”
- “What’s the best laptop under ₹70,000 for video editing and gaming?”
- “How do I get grass stains out of white sneakers quickly?
Gemini Live and New Speaker Tease
Google is also introducing Gemini Live, activated by saying: “Hey Google, let’s chat.” This enables a natural back-and-forth dialogue without having to repeat the hotword every time.
Gemini for Home will begin rolling out as a replacement for Google Assistant on Nest Hubs, Nest Audio, and Nest Mini over time, with early access starting in October 2025. There will be both free and paid versions available.
During the keynote, Google teased a new smart speaker. The design resembles a squished-down sphere with a glowing blue, purple, and white Gemini light at the base, evoking elements of the Nest Wifi aesthetic.
