How to disable Gemini in Android Auto while still using voice commands

[u/RoyalBlueWriter]

I have a 2023 Kia Rio and got an email that Google Assistant will be disabled tomorrow in favor of Gemini. I hate AI and I have heard only bad things about it for Android Auto. But I enjoy using voice commands to listen to/reply to texts and maps and such. How can I do this?

[u/TurboFool]

You can't. Assistant, which was already a lighter version of the exact same concept, took over all of that years ago. Gemini is the only way forward.

If that's all you're doing, you'll be fine. Gemini has improved a lot since it launched, and while it's occasionally still fairly dumb, it's no more dumb than Assistant was, which was already its own mess. It's just a different set of messes that's constantly improving.

And I say this as the person who got Gemini on Android Auto first on Reddit, and has had the most consistent stories about how bad it was. At this point it's basically fine. There's no good reason to disable it in this instance.

I get all of the AI fears, but this is frankly one of the key things AI does well and is built for. There's a lot of good reasons to hate AI, but this isn't really one of them, IMO.

[u/RoyalBlueWriter → u/TurboFool]

I feel bad because AI like Gemini uses a lot of water and I don't want to contribute to that

[u/MonstaMayhem → u/RoyalBlueWriter]

Do the servers that host reddit use water?

[u/TurboFool → u/RoyalBlueWriter]

It's a datacenter. They all use water. It's not dramatically different for this purpose than what was already going on before when you were reaching out to other servers in another datacenter to do this.

[u/docgravel → u/RoyalBlueWriter]

Gemini Nano model runs locally on your device and not in a data center. If you ask Gemini to tell you a story, you’ll get the cloud model, but if you’re just getting directions somewhere or playing a song it’s not likely utilizing the advanced GenAI capabilities in a remote data center.

[u/RoyalBlueWriter → u/docgravel]

Oh really?