The developers of great generative AI chatbots continue to push new features at a rapid pace as they bid to make sure their bot is the one you turn to whenever you need AI help.
One of the latest updates to Google Gemini gives you the ability to set up scheduled actions. These are exactly what they sound like: tasks you can have Google Gemini run automatically, on a schedule. Maybe you want a weather and news report every morning at 7am, or maybe you want a dinner suggestion every evening at 7pm. Anything you can already do in Gemini, you can schedule.
Bring Gemini up to date in this regard with the ChatGPT app, which introduced scheduled tasks a few months ago. The idea here is more or less the same: the bot can carry out your commands at a specific time in the future and keep repeating them if you need to. Here’s how the feature works on both platforms.
Using Scheduled Actions in Gemini
At the time of writing, this requires a subscription to Google’s AI service, which starts at $20 per month for Google AI Pro. The chatbot can track up to 10 scheduled actions at once, so you have to be quite selective about how you use it. You can use scheduled actions in Gemini on the web and mobile apps for Android and iOS.
All you have to do to create a scheduled action in Gemini is to describe it and include the schedule details in the message. For example, you could tell Gemini to “generate an image of a cat playing with a ball of yarn, every Monday at 12pm” or “ask me a general knowledge question every evening at 7pm”.
Scheduled actions can be set up once, such as next Friday at 3:00 PM, so that something happens on a specific day at a specific time. Alternatively, your actions can run on a daily, weekly or monthly recurring basis. They can’t be put on a more complicated cadence (like every second Tuesday of the month), or surprise you at random.
Gemini should recognize that you’ve asked it to schedule something, and it will present a summary: what you’ve asked it to do, when, and how often. Assuming all of this information is correct, you don’t need to do anything else. The action runs regardless of whether you have Gemini open at the time, and you’ll be notified of an action running via a notification on your devices (if you have them enabled) and an email.
