That floating Gemini Assistant UI Google teased at I/O was just spotted in the wild

Earlier this year, during Google’s annual I/O developer conference, the tech giant showed off its Gemini AI assistant’s capabilities, complete with a stray floating window panel for the assistant that now appears to be materializing.

The AI assistant, which is still a second draft pick over the old trusty Google Assistant for a majority of users, is slowly but surely gaining new bells and whistles.

If you’ve been using Gemini as the default assistant for a while now, you might have noticed that whenever you call for it, the assistant’s UI appears as a clean-looking floating panel that pops up on top of the app you were using.

If you ask it to perform a regular task like “open my messages” or “pull up the camera,” the floating panel collapses, and you’re redirected to the desired app.

However, in instances where you ask for it to perform a more complex task, the ones that need the Assistant to pull up the Gemini chatbot UI, like “create images of a mountain,” it takes you to a separate awkward window altogether, as seen in this GIF attached above. Google had previously suggested that users can expect a refreshed Gemini Assistant UI, and it appears to be rolling out for some now.

New UI spotted in the wild

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Now, as shared by Android Authority, it looks like the assistant will soon begin behaving like its older counterpart and maintain its floating window, allowing users to interact with the assistant without having to leave the app they were on. The publication shared a GIF highlighting the new UI, which had rolled out to a user running Google app version 15.31.29.28.arm64 beta on their Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Source: Android Authority

The new UI indeed looks way cleaner than what we have now, allowing users to keep a glancing eye on the app they were on while being able to designate tasks to the AI assistant. Apart from it just being a visual change, the new UI might also enable drag-and-drop features, like being able to generate an image within the assistant, and then dragging it off to a messaging app in the background.

The change hasn’t rolled out widely, but it has started appearing for “some Gemini users,” suggests the report. It is likely that the change will show up on more devices post the Made by Google event on August 13. It is also likely that Google will flaunt the new UI at the event.

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