Google Adds Camera and Screen Sharing to Gemini for iPhone
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While we’re waiting for Apple to smarten up Siri in iOS 19, Google has unveiled some powerful improvements to its Gemini iPhone app, which enables its powerful chatbot to do even more for iPhone users.
Last year, Google introduced “the Gemini era” when it added a conversational Gemini Live chatbot to its Pixel 9 lineup, later rolling it out as a core part of Android to be adopted by Samsung and other iPhone rivals. Apple has its work cut out for it in catching up, with the first Siri improvements already running behind schedule, and now Google is pulling even further ahead with the latest round of updates to Gemini.
During its I/O 2025 conference this week, Google announced several new features that will help its AI assistant start to “understand your world and anticipate your needs,” and it’s bringing these enhancements to all the platforms where Gemini is available, including the iPhone.
This includes camera and screen sharing in the iOS app, which will allow you to get real-time visual assistance with anything you’re looking at, whether that’s something in the real world or a task on your iPhone’s screen.
While that’s not unlike Apple’s Visual Intelligence, Gemini Live takes it a step further thanks to its more sophisticated AI models. For example, it can analyze a live video stream in real-time rather than just identifying static objects and do that while you’re actively conversing with it.
For example, Gemini Live can identify what the user is looking at and even correct wrong assumptions. In more practical applications, you could use it to help organize a space, brainstorm creative projects, and troubleshoot problems with furniture and appliances.
Google also demonstrated another scenario in part of its broader Project Astra where a student could point their iPhone camera at a page in a textbook and engage in a real-time discussion as the AI tutor guides them through their homework, answering questions and providing further clarification.
Gemini can also provide a live vocal feed of a person’s surroundings, making it a useful accessibility tool for those with low vision.
Gemini Live is a fully conversational chatbot that’s already leaps and bounds ahead of Siri, although it also started from a different angle. While Apple has yet to deliver on its promised Siri improvements, it planned to begin with personal context and focus on making its voice assistant more conversational in a later, second phase of improvements. Personal context was expected to arrive this year in iOS 18.4, with a more free-flowing conversational mode slated for iOS 19.4 in early 2026. However, it now seems unlikely that we’ll see this second stage before early 2027.
Meanwhile, Google has nailed the conversational side, but it’s only beginning to add true personal context, so it wouldn’t necessarily be that far ahead if Apple had been able to stick to its original schedule. In the coming weeks, the company says Gemini will begin integrating more deeply into Google’s app ecosystem to enable it to deliver features similar to those showcased by Apple for Siri at last year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).
In the coming weeks, Gemini Live will integrate more deeply into your daily life. Planning a night out with friends? Discuss the details in Gemini Live, and it instantly creates an event in your Google Calendar. Craving deep-dish pizza? Ask, and get the latest details from Google Maps. We’re starting to integrate Google Maps, Calendar, Tasks and Keep, with more Google ecosystem connections planned.
Google has already begun rolling out camera and screen sharing to all Gemini for iOS users for free. Last week, Google Workspace users also gained access to Gemini Live, which has been available to personal Google users for a few months.
Google also announced Imagen 4 and Veo 3, new image and video generation models that improve quality, text rendering, and performance, along with native support for sound effects, background noises, and dialog between characters in generated videos.
