How You Can Use Gemini AI On Your Google TV (When It Launches)

In 2017, Google put its assistant on the smart TV platform for the first time. In the years that have passed since, Google Assistant has been replaced with the new Gemini assistant across the entirety of Google's hardware ecosystem. At the I/O 2025 event in May, Google announced that the Gemini assistant will finally make its way to TVs later this year, after finding a spot on smartphones, Chromebooks, and desktops.

So, how will Gemini work on the new Google TV platform? Well, just the way things worked with Google Assistant. Back when Android TV was a thing, the remotes used to come with a dedicated Google Assistant button. However, it worked just fine with TVs that had an onboard mic to let users summon the AI assistant with a voice command. Gemini won't be any different.

You will be able to summon it using the "hey Google" hotword. Now, you can either speak the voice command into the remote's built-in mic or say it loud enough for the TV's microphone array to pick it up. Either way, Gemini will jump into action the moment it detects users summoning it.

TCL, for example, is making Google TV gear that will come equipped with far-field mics so that users can interact with Gemini directly, without ever touching the remote. Once the AI assistant shows up with its distinct pill-shaped bar at the bottom, users can push relevant queries such as "suggest me some fun movies like Jurassic Park" or "give me the sports news overview for the day."

At CES, Google gave a glimpse of its next-gen approach to smart TVs. The company created a mock living room setup and showcased a TV armed with mics as well as ambient sensors. As users approach the TV in a room, the screen turns on, showing custom wallpapers. As users inch closer within the usual viewing range, the home screen pops up with the familiar content carousel.

Thanks to the onboard mic array, users can say the hotword and the Gemini conversation box will appear at the bottom of the screen. Once there, users can ask the AI assistant questions regarding content discovery and recommendation. "Beyond just entertainment, it can even help your kids explore their endless questions about the solar system by answering questions and pulling up the perfect YouTube video to learn more," Google said in blog post.

The biggest benefit is that, compared to Google Assistant, Gemini is a lot more conversational, thanks to its deeper natural language understanding and advanced capabilities. In addition to answering queries tied to the platform it is running on, it has also been trained on a massive corpus of data and can answer questions across different domains, unlike Google Assistant.

The next-gen Google TV hardware running Gemini, one that can sense user presence in the vicinity, will land later this year. For now, TCL, Hisense, and Sony are the brands that have committed to making Gemini-ready Google TV models with ambient sensors and mics onboard. We are expecting more labels to join the race in the coming months.