Google Gemini tries out a second voice

How important to you is how your phone sounds? No, we don’t mean the audio quality from its speakers (although that can be pretty important), but “who” you’re talking to when you’re interacting with your phone’s virtual assistant. Google Assistant lets you choose from between a dozen different voice profiles, with two new ones introduced just last year. But so far, with Google’s new Gemini AI, you’ve only had a single voice to talk to. Now that situation is finally changing.

We first caught wind of development heading in this direction about a month ago, when we discovered Google working on a new settings option for its Android app. While it wasn’t functional at the time, it appeared that Google was planning to give users the ability to choose between two voices — and notably, this was all distinct from Assistant voice settings. Although this new addition being related to Gemini wasn’t a slam dunk, it certainly seemed like one of the best theories we had at the time.

Fast-forward to today, and 9to5Google noticed that Gemini is suddenly speaking with a new voice. While Gemini sounded male before, the new voice is distinctly female. We’re not sure if Google has pushed this change out universally, or is testing it in a more limited fashion, but we can confirm that we can hear Gemini using its new voice on our Android phones.

The ability to choose between multiple voices isn’t a huge-huge deal, but it’s the sort of quality of life improvement that might get more users enthusiastic about giving Gemini a shot in the first place; right now the app’s on-boarding is very much dominated by “here’s the Assistant stuff you’re giving up,” and just having the familiarity of being able to choose your preferred response voice could smooth that over the smallest bit. We don’t know if we need another dozen to feel satisfied, but a couple more options (and definitely the ability to actively choose between them) couldn’t hurt.