I wanted Gemini Daily Brief to be great, but it's kind of a mess

Daily Brief was one of the many new AI features unveiled during the Google I/O keynote. It’s Google’s attempt at a generative AI assistant, designed to help organize your life and pull information from various sources. If that sounds familiar, it should. Google tried something similar with Daily Hub when the Pixel 10 series launched, only to pull it back for further improvements shortly after.

It’s also similar to what Samsung has tried with Now Brief, with limited success. On paper, it seems like a fantastic idea. I’d enjoy having a generative assistant that pores over my communications, schedule, and local weather to come up with the best plan of attack for my day — but that’s far from reality.

I’ve used Daily Brief for a few days, and Google has plenty of work to do.

The sales pitch for Daily Brief sounds good

Daily Brief is a personalized digest designed to help you organize your day. In theory, it’ll read through your emails, calendar, and to-do list, prioritizing items and reminding you of what is on your plate. It’s actually a good idea, and if it worked properly, I’d enjoy using it. Unfortunately, it’s not useful in its current state.

Through a few days of use, Daily Brief has yet to produce anything that feels generative or even remotely useful. It constantly reminds me of emails I intentionally ignore, like reviewing sign-in requests from accounts. It’s urged me two days in a row to explore more of the features of the Motorola Razr Ultra I’m testing, and it repeatedly thinks it’s a good idea if I find more ways to use Google’s Gemini tools — hardly the succinct and prioritized summary of my day I was promised.

It’s especially disappointing because Google’s short-lived Daily Hub showed more promise. Yes, it was often a preview of the weather and of my calendar for the day, but it did manage to slip in some personalized touches. It knew my bowling league season was about to start, so it suggested helpful YouTube videos and apps to help me keep track of my scores. It wasn’t Earth-shattering, but it felt tailored to me.

Now Brief is still somehow better than Daily Brief

It feels almost mind-numbing to say, but I prefer Samsung’s Now Brief to Gemini’s Daily Brief. Sure, it merely spits out today’s weather and serves up a randomly depressing news story about a murder somewhere in Texas, but it’s at least presented in a way that makes sense. And if I want to use the service, I can place a widget on my home screen.

Daily Brief makes Gemini a destination app for the service. Google needs to follow the rest of its AI roadmap for smartphones and push it into the background. If the company wants me to give it a legitimate shot, it needs to at least present the information better — actually ranking and prioritizing what it thinks I should tackle first.

I’m still high on the idea of Daily Brief and Now Brief if one of these companies can implement it properly. The example shown on stage during the Google I/O keynote is a useful nugget — something like remembering to return an item or getting a refund. Those are tasks that constantly slip my mind, and I’d be sick to think how much money I’ve thrown away over the years by not following up.

However, we’re not there yet, and the result is yet another AI product that I’m trying to shoehorn into my smartphone experience.

I need more from AI than just making it easier for me to buy things

I couldn’t help but notice that Google featured more than a few AI products during the keynote that, in some way, would end in a purchase. Even Google’s new AI search seems open to the highest bidder, doing away with links in favor of AI-generated buying advice. I’m uncomfortable with all of it, and while I know I still have final say before any money changes hands, it’s not a path I want to go down eagerly.

Giving up more and more privacy online has never felt good, but there was at least some value in return. Yes, companies were able to make money off our data and ads became targeted, but the services and the convenience eased the pain — that’s not the case anymore. The last shreds of privacy are being ripped away. AI agents can now read our emails and calendars and know more about our day than we do, but instead of offering that privacy in return for services that make my life better, all I get are half-baked products.

I don’t need more innovative ways to buy things, and I’m pretty good at determining which products I want. It’s especially disappointing when I realize the AI features that make Google the most money will probably be far better on launch than Daily Brief. I’m not naive enough to think we can claw back any of our privacy, but if I’m going to give up every last detail of my life, Google can at least produce something that works.