Google Gemini Introduces Scheduled Actions: A New Era of AI Automation with Limitations

Gemini's scheduled actions are rolling out, but there's a catch

Summary Scheduled Actions let users automate prompts like daily summaries using Google Gemini. The feature is exclusive to Gemini AI Pro and Ultra subscribers on Android only. The app is currently limited to 10 active schedules, tied to the location where they were created. Scheduled Actions could be a game-changer for Google Gemini. Imagine having AI remind you about important events in your calendar, emails you need to deal with, and tasks you've assigned yourself. It can surface these, and more, at scheduled times. Well, it's finally coming, but there's a catch. Related I learned the truth about AI's environmental impact and it ruined everything This makes it a hard pillow to swallow Posts 4 The feature has started rolling out more broadly on Android, but only for users with a paid Gemini AI Pro or Ultra plan (via 9to5Google). It was originally teased a few weeks ago. You can use it for things like morning briefings, weekly blog ideas, etc. We used to call it Google Assistant, but better late than never. Proactive help for those who pay Close Source: 9to5Google Creating a Scheduled Action is easy. Give Gemini a prompt such as "Summarize my unread emails every morning at 7 am." Gemini will confirm the setup with an inline card. You can manage all your scheduled items through your profile picture in the top-right of the Gemini app, where a new "Scheduled actions" page now appears. You can choose to pause or delete any of your active prompts. However, there are limitations. Only 10 Scheduled Actions can be active at once. Also, any actions that use a location as a trigger will always use the location where the action was created. But that's not the biggest limitation. Access is where people are going to run up against a paywall. Scheduled Actions are currently only available to Gemini AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. Also, the feature isn't on iOS or web, yet, and there's no word if it will ever be made available for free users. It's like Assistant but prettier Google Assistant had similar functions, called Routines. Scheduled Actions are clearly the replacement, and is just another nail in the coffin of Assistant. It also shows how Gemini is evolving from a chatbot to a fully featured digital assistant, the one we all envisioned when Google Assistant first appeared back in 2016. But unlike with Assistant, you'll need to pay to get the most use out of Gemini.

Gemini app rolling out Scheduled Actions on Android

Following the announcement in early June, Google is more widely rolling out Scheduled Actions to the Gemini app on Android. Scheduled Actions let you run a prompt at a specific time, day, date, or after an event. To create, just "provide details about when and how often you want to schedule the action" in the command. Gemini will confirm the Scheduled Action and automatically enable it. The inline card shows a "Pause" button. To manage in the future and see everything you've created, tap your avatar in the top-right corner for the profile menu. There's a new "Scheduled actions" item between "Apps" and "Gem manager." This page lists all your actions and when it's scheduled, with the "Pause" button and "Delete" behind the overflow menu. You can "have up to 10 active scheduled actions at a time." Scheduled Actions with location will "use the location where you created the action for all future responses." Example use cases include: As of today, we're seeing Gemini's Scheduled Actions more widely rolled out on Android for AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers. Force stop from App info (version 16.23 beta). We're not seeing it in the iOS app or gemini.google.com.

How to Use Gemini's New 'Scheduled Actions' (and a Few I Recommend)

We got a glimpse at a lot of new features coming to Gemini at Google IO and one of the most interesting is rolling out right now. The new Scheduled Actions feature lets you tell Gemini to run prompts at certain times in the future, and even recur on a regular basis. It sounds small, but it opens quite a few new possibilities. This scheduling feature is designed to work seamlessly with ordinary Gemini prompts. Ask the chatbot to perform or repeat a task in the future and it will automatically schedule the tasks. You can even convert an existing chat into a scheduled action. Here's how it works, and a few ideas of what you can do with it. While the scheduling feature should just work, in theory, there are a couple of nuances in practice. In my testing, Gemini occasionally got confused and told me that it couldn't perform a task now based on information in the future. However, a clarifying follow up usually did the trick. There are also a couple of key limitations: Once you have an action scheduled, you can see it and all your other saved actions by tapping your profile icon in the Gemini app or heading to Settings on the web and selecting "Scheduled actions." You can't do much here other than pause or delete the activity, but if you want to cancel the instructions, you have the option. I'll admit, when I hear the stock AI use case example of "get a summary of your email!" I get skeptical. Is it really more efficient to ask a chatbot to summarize your emails than to just scan them yourself? Well, it is if you only have to ask once. Ask Gemini something like "Give me a summary of my new unread emails every morning" and you'll get a notification each day. You can further refine this approach by giving Gemini specific instructions for your needs. For example, you could instruct Gemini to highlight any emails from your boss, or filter out promotional emails, sales, or newsletters. Keep in mind that this technique has the same error rate as anything else in Gemini (or any AI chatbot for that matter). It's handy for getting a quick overview of the messages waiting for you, but it's still probably a good idea to glance at your inbox before telling your boss you didn't get that email. Via the Workspace connection, you can ask Gemini to give you a rundown of all your events throughout the week that are in your calendar. Since Gemini can also query Google Maps, you can even ask complex questions like how far your doctor's appointment is from your home. Once again, the power in this technique comes in how you can ask Gemini for specific types of information or how to format the itinerary it presents. For example, on a day when I had two appointments in different parts of town, I asked Gemini how long I would spend driving. It was able to add the various estimated driving times and give me a grand total. It can take a little finagling to get the wording right. It took a couple of tries before I settled on explicitly telling Gemini to "assume I'm starting and ending my day at home," but once I found a prompt that worked, the scheduled action meant I only had to write it once. Sometimes you know some information you're going to want to have, but it just doesn't exist yet. For example, say you want to know who won the Oscars, but don't plan to watch the show. You can schedule a query ahead of time and, once the big day arrives, Gemini will summarize the info for you. Personally, I find it a bit more useful for things where the search is more complex than a simple "who won?" For example, Death Stranding 2 is coming out very soon. And while nothing could stop me from playing it myself, I would still like to read a selection of reviews. So, I have a prompt scheduled next week to bring me a selection of reviews from some of my favorite sites. I don't personally have a need for a generic summary (I read the humans' writing for a reason), but you could ask Gemini for questions about a particular topic, like what reviewers think of the game mechanics, or how bafflingly convoluted they found the story. For now, there are already a few cool uses for this feature, but it's worth mentioning that Google demoed quite a lot more. As part of its demo of Agent Mode, the company showed an example of asking Gemini to find new apartments every week and send the user a summary. That kind of task requires a lot more autonomy than the public version of Gemini is currently capable of, but it does highlight how handy scheduled actions can become in the future. We'd have to evaluate how well Agent Mode is at performing complex tasks, but for now Gemini is capable of simple internet queries, collating your emails and calendar, and performing some complex planning.