{"id":1295,"date":"2026-06-01T23:14:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T23:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=1295"},"modified":"2026-06-01T23:14:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T23:14:47","slug":"google-gemini-spark-ai-agent-hands-on-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=1295","title":{"rendered":"Gemini\u2019s new AI agent is about as good as Google\u2019s demo"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Google\u2019s new \u201c24\/7\u201d AI agent, Gemini Spark, can be shockingly good at doing things on your behalf. But I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s worth the financial cost and potential privacy tradeoffs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The company gave me access to Spark last week. Google advertises Spark as an AI agent that can take on tasks and work on them in the background \u2014 even tasks that have multiple steps \u2014 allowing you to put your phone down or walk away from your computer. It also advertises at the very top<\/em> of the Spark website<\/em><\/a> that it\u2019s \u201calways under your direction,\u201d that \u201cyou choose to turn it on,\u201d and that \u201cit\u2019s designed to check with you before taking major actions.\u201d Given the mounting skepticism toward AI, it\u2019s very much \u201cmy \u2018not involved in rogue AI\u2019 T-shirt has people asking questions already answered by my shirt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I didn\u2019t know where to start, so I took a page from my colleague Antonio\u2019s book<\/a>: I decided to use Spark to tackle tasks like what Google demonstrated onstage at I\/O. Would it work as well in my home office as it did on the big stage?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Google\u2019s<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Google\u2019s Josh Woodward demoing Spark.<\/em><\/figcaption>Photo by Allison Johnson \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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At I\/O, Google VP Josh Woodward showed off a few different examples. The first was asking Spark to draft an email to a team at Google, compile everything about the Gemini Live launches and \u201cwins from last week,\u201d and use a special AI skill to make the email sound like him. Google asking Google to do things for Google should <\/em>be the easiest lift in the world, so I tried to push it further.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I asked Gemini to draft an email to my wife that compiles our total monthly average grocery spending in 2026. I figured this test would tell me a few things: Could Spark figure out who my wife was (without me giving Spark her name), could it determine where our budget spreadsheet is in Drive (which does not have \u201cbudget\u201d in the file name), and could it actually draft an email in Gmail?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When I got the result from Spark shortly after, I really said: \u201cWow, that\u2019s actually nuts.\u201d Spark found my wife\u2019s email address, pulled the right information from our 2026 budget spreadsheet, grabbed the monthly grocery totals including the incomplete data from May (which still wasn\u2019t over when I ran the test), averaged the totals, and put it all in a draft email in my Gmail. The text of the email addressed my wife by her first name, even though her email address does not contain her first name. It even included a sign-off that we use just for each other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In his next example, Woodward asked for some help planning a block party. I\u2019m<\/em> not planning a block party, but I asked Spark for help using the same questions he asked. It didn\u2019t go well. It created a table of friends and family as a \u201chighly realistic reference for who is bringing what,\u201d drafted an email in my Gmail mentioning a shared sign-up sheet that doesn\u2019t exist, and created an ugly deck with slides detailing information about city permits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To push Spark, I asked it to create that missing sign-up sheet and add a link to the email that was already drafted. While Spark took a few minutes to figure it out, that task did work; it created a spreadsheet and went back to the draft email text and dropped in the link.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Woodward\u2019s last demo was arguably the most impressive. He talked at Spark to ask it to do a bunch of things: make his meetings with CEO Sundar Pichai hot pink on his calendar, write a note to a new neighbor to invite him to his block party, and create a document to help with to-dos for his kids for the end of the school year. For my own version, I asked it to make a calendar event each month ahead of my wife\u2019s birthday and make it hot pink, draft an email to my family about sending them the first episode of the latest season of Taskmaster<\/em>, and create a document with the top things my wife and I need to know about getting our toddler ready for preschool.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I started this request at 3:35PM PT on Friday. During I\/O, Woodward made a bit of a show about putting his phone down and promising to check the results later in the keynote, which he did. But after addressing one hiccup \u2014 Spark wanted to access my contacts, which I declined \u2014 my task was done about four minutes later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Once again, I was a little floored by the results, though they were imperfect:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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