Google Gemini for Home hands-on: The AI ​​that monitors everything

This weekend, I turned my house into a testing lab for new Google technologies Gemini for home AI My family was subjected to 72-hour surveillance, where they monitored, interpreted and narrated our every move. My purpose? To find out if all-seeing AI is actually useful or just creepy.

“R unload items from a box,” read one notification from a Nest camera on a shelf in the kitchen. She continued: “Jenny cuts a pie / Goes into the kitchen and washes dishes in the sink / Jenny gets a drink from the fridge.” At times, the alerts sounded like the beginning of a joke, “A dog, a person, and two cats enter the room / Two chickens walk across the yard.”

But these were not jokes. They were mostly accurate descriptions of what was going on in and around my house, many of which I pinned Google Nest cameras powered by Gemini for the home. This is a new AI layer in the Google Home app that interprets footage from cameras and is integrated into it Nest’s facial recognition feature – Provides written descriptions of events, including who or what is present, what they are doing, and sometimes even what they are wearing.

For example, now, instead of alerts that say “animal detected on porch,” I get more descriptive versions that tell me it’s two chickens or one dog. One of these requires immediate action on my part (my husband is not a fan of chickens pooping on our outdoor couch). The other I can ignore. Alerts like the one from the Nest Doorbell at 1 a.m., which says my son is at the front door trying to get in, are less alarming than an alert that says “person detected.”

Using AI to improve the constant barrage of notifications from security cameras is a big upgrade — and one that every manufacturer offers bell to Arlo to Wiz Chasing. But how much can we really trust AI to monitor our home?

While Gemini did not hallucinate strangers or wildlife in my house as much Others reportedHer daily summaries — called Home Summaryes — in the Google Home app leaned more toward fiction than fact. This is where Gemini AI at home becomes a problem.

I do not register my family inside our home. I leave security to the outside cameras and turn off any indoor cameras when we’re home. But I wanted to give Jiminy as much information as possible, so I outfitted my house with cameras ready to record.

I installed the new one Nest Doorbell 2K, Nest 2K indoor cameraand Nest Cam External 2K (All wired), as well as some earlier models Compatible with Gemini. This provided surveillance of the main traffic routes in and out of my home, as well as a large area of ​​my backyard.

Gemini Descriptions and Home Summary, which are currently in Early Access, require $20 per month or $200 per year Google Home Premium Advanced Subscription, which also includes 24/7 video recording. The AI ​​only analyzes video, not audio, because it uses the vision language model for processing. Gemini AI also powers a new feature in the Google Home app called Ask Home, which lets you search recorded video, something Ring also offers.

when I tested Ring’s version of video searchI have found it helpful to monitor my outdoor cat. Google’s version is better, because it understood the context of my requests. When I asked both to show me the last time chickens were on my porch, Gemini showed the most recent sightings, while Ring showed me the best match, which was three days ago.

But beyond finding stray animals, I struggled to find value in this detailed account of the events that occurred in my home. And yes, it’s a scary feeling.

Real-time alerts were mostly accurate and straightforward. There were only two big mistakes I noticed: I thought my dog ​​was a backyard fox, and while I had a package on my doorstep waiting to be picked up, anyone who approached the door became someone delivering a package.

However, Geminis seem to have some selective interpretations. I tried to get her to say I had a knife, and even waved it threateningly at the camera. But it will only use words like chopping or carving in the descriptions, without mentioning the knife. And it was a big knife!

When my husband left the house carrying a rifle, the alert said he was carrying a garden tool. It’s unclear if this was intentional (I’ve reached out to Google), but not specifying weapons seems like a major oversight for a security-focused system. I would like to know if someone has a gun on my porch or has a knife in my house.

Daily Home Briefs is where it gets weird. At around 8:30 each night, the Google Home app displays its interpretation of the day’s events in a new Activity tab. You can customize this to focus on the things that matter most to you; For me, this is animals and teenagers arriving home after curfew.

The summaries were about 80% correct, with a few worrying confusions – the pizza oven was said to be delivered when I was actually taking it away. But my main problem was with the strict editorials in the summaries. Gemini took accurate descriptions of real-time events and turned them into narratives full of declarative sentences that were simply untrue.

For example, on Halloween, the synopsis said: “Jenny and R are seen interacting trick-or-treating and enjoying the festive atmosphere.” While I was distributing candy, my daughter R was not home. Another summary detailing how my husband and I spent a fun evening relaxing on the couch with others. We were home alone.

Home Brief is an interesting concept. Receiving an end-of-day summary instead of constantly being distracted by alerts throughout the day can help reduce notification fatigue. But that doesn’t mean I can turn off real-time notifications. I don’t want to wait for a pleasant evening at home to find out about the person who broke into my car at six in the morning, or that a fox got into the hen house.

Google Home needs a way to prioritize urgent alerts over less important ones. It also needs to integrate these elements with my smart home so I can use certain events — like chickens on the porch — to trigger automated responses.

But making things up like Home Feed did is unforgivable for a system used for home security. Google Home indicates that Gemini might make mistakes and offers short clips under the Home Feed so you can check its work, for example, to see that my husband and I were sitting alone in the living room after all. But while Gemini may be able to describe what’s going on, it’s these attempts to explain what matters that often fail.

While I found the AI ​​descriptions of outdoor cameras helpful, Gemini’s “intelligence” didn’t convince me to start running cameras inside the house. If I was going to consider letting an AI narrate my family’s life, it would have to be more useful and more accurate.