Google is cutting Gemini loose from the internet

Google appears to be building something nobody expected from Gemini Live: a voice AI conversation with no internet at all. The latest Google app for Android (17.71.17), released on October 30, contains the strings "Offline mode" and "Use Gemini Live without an internet connection."

Judging by the names in the code, the toggle will sit in Gemini's account menu next to extensions and settings. A mockup of the interface turned up as well. The feature does not work yet, and Google has not announced it.

Right now Gemini Live runs entirely in the cloud: speech recognition, fast replies and voice synthesis all go through Google's servers. How that fits on a phone is unclear. The most realistic guess is that offline mode will lean on Gemini Nano, the small model that already runs directly on many Android phones. In that case it will probably be slower and simpler than the cloud version, and camera and screen sharing may not work without a connection. Which devices and languages get it is unknown too.

If Google ships it, the voice assistant will finally work on a plane, in the subway and anywhere the signal drops. For now it is just a few lines of code, and finds like this sometimes never reach users.