Starting later in 2025, yelling at your TV will finally accomplish something thanks to a new Google initiative announced Monday ahead of CES 2025. The company plans to incorporate its Gemini AI models into the Google TV experience as a means to “make interacting with your TV more intuitive and helpful.”
Google claims that this “will make searching through your media easier than ever, and you will be able to ask questions about travel, health, space, history, and more, with videos in the results for added context,” the company wrote in its announcement blog post. Google had previously forfeited a significant chunk of its market value after its Gemini prototype, dubbed Bard, flubbed its space-based response during the model’s first public demo in 2023. Google also had to pause the AI’s image-generation feature in early 2024, after it started outputting racially offensive depictions of people of color.
“The Gemini model on Google TV also enables you to do other things like create customized artwork with the family, control your smart home devices while your TV is in ambient mode, and even get an overview of the day’s news,” the company continued. You’d think that people would prefer being able to control their smart home devices without having to put their TV into standby, but the company seems confident in its offering. “These features will begin rolling out later this year on select Google TV devices,” Google added.
Google has been investing heavily in its Gemini model and app since 2023, and looks to continue doing so in 2025. We’ve seen the AI spread steadily throughout Google’s product ecosystem, including its mobile, laptop, and tablet offerings, and integrate across Workspace apps like Calendar and Gmail, and, as also announced Monday, into the WearOS environment. What’s more, the company plans to make the expansion of Gemini its “biggest focus” of the new year.
“I think 2025 will be critical,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees during a companywide strategy session held in December. “I think it’s really important we internalize the urgency of this moment, and need to move faster as a company. The stakes are high. These are disruptive moments. In 2025, we need to be relentlessly focused on unlocking the benefits of this technology and solving real user problems.”
