Using Gemini to Turn on Your Lights Is Now 40% Faster—but It's Still Too Slow

All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Gizmodo may earn an affiliate commission. As you may already be painfully aware of, Google made a big change to the voice assistant powering its smart speakers. Gone are the days of the regular Google Assistant, and here are the days of Gemini for Home, an assistant that’s infused with the power of Google’s AI chatbot. Google promised a lot of things with its Gemini update, but one thing it didn’t mention was that everyday commands would get a lot slower. Having used an old Nest Mini speaker almost every day since the update, I can corroborate that slowness. It’s been rough, but Google says it has a fix. Kind of…. sort of. In a new March 17 update, Google says it has patched a few bugs in Gemini for Home and that its voice assistant is now 40% faster at processing “everyday commands” like “turn on the lights.” I tested the update myself, and that 40% figure feels kind of accurate. In a half-dozen commands to turn my lights on or off, Gemini for Home was speedy most of the time, though in one of those interactions, it took a four-second pause to turn my b