Google Gemini wants to become a more proactive assistant

Google eventually wants Gemini to become an always-on assistant, one that's proactive rather than reactive. Magic Cue on Pixel phones offers a glimpse of that vision, surfacing relevant information based on the context of your conversation. Gemini Proactive Assistance appears to be the next step in bringing that idea to life.

A teardown of the latest Google app beta (v17.18) (via 9to5Google) points to a "Proactive Assistance" feature designed to deliver "personalized suggestions at the right time."

The associated strings suggest Proactive Assistance can pull information from specified apps, including Gmail, Contacts, Messages, and Calendar, to provide relevant insights, such as upcoming events, important dates, and locations. Proactive Assistance may see your notifications and on-screen content for additional context.

The Android Authority team managed to activate the relevant Proactive Assistance settings, revealing more details about how it will work.

Before you raise your privacy pitchforks about the feature, Proactive Assistant will process all data entirely on-device. All information will be encrypted and stored on your phone. Google will also never use it for training purposes.

Since there's on-device processing involved, Google may initially roll out Proactive Assistance to Pixel phones only.

With I/O 2026 a few weeks away, Google could talk more about Proactive Assistance and how it will work at its biggest developer event of the year.

An always-on smarter assistant

While not everyone will be comfortable giving Gemini access to their personal information and notifications, it's this level of access that will make the AI assistant more useful in daily use.

Proactive Assistance could pull data from your calendar and remind you to leave for a meeting within the next 30 minutes, based on real-time traffic conditions. It could also automatically surface your boarding pass as you arrive at the airport.

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While it may not happen at launch, Proactive Assistance may eventually feature third-party app integration to pull in more relevant information. That would further increase its usefulness, as it wouldn’t be limited to Google’s ecosystem.

There's still a lot we don't know about Proactive Assistance, though. While it seems impressive based on the reports, it should actually work properly in daily use.