Worried about losing Gemini Gems? Google might spare you from starting Spark Skills from scratch

Google is preparing to phase out Gemini Gems and replace them with Gemini Spark-based Skills. An earlier deprecation message suggested a cut-off date of October 20, but it seems Google plans to give users some reprieve with a multi-stage timeline and a migration plan.

Google’s deprecation message for Gems was previously spotted to read:

With Google app 17.55.8 from last week, we spotted that this changed to:

Within the latest Google app v17.56.14, this now reads:

As the message makes it abundantly clear, Google will still let users continue using Gems until the middle of November, but they won’t be able to create or edit Gems from mid-October onwards. When the deadline passes, Google will automatically migrate all Gems to Skills. This saves users from manually migrating their Gems and will hopefully not break workflows.

At their core, Gemini Gems and Gemini Spark Skills serve similar needs. They are both instruction sets and saved context files that teach AI how to handle recurring tasks according to your exact preferences. But because Skills live inside Gemini Spark, they can also be used for proactive automation, while Gems are primarily restricted to being a reactive chat partner.

However, another big difference between the two is that Gems is available to all Gemini users, while Skills (and Spark) are available only to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers. Unless Google opens up Skills (and by extension, Spark) to free users, this upcoming move will put a useful Gemini customization tool behind a paywall for many users.

Google hasn’t yet communicated any intention of retiring Gemini Gems in favor of Spark Skills, nor provided a timeline for it, so the company’s plans on this end are very much in flux. We’ll keep you updated when there’s an official announcement or when we learn more.