Gemini received a significant update today, with Gems and the Gems Manager now available to advanced users globally. However, the current functionality of Gems is somewhat limited. Users can only add custom prompts to Gemini for personal use, essentially turning Gems into a collection of different prompts that users can manage within Gemini. Many users are comparing the Gems Manager to the custom GPT builder available on ChatGPT. According to reverse engineering leaks, it seems that additional features for the Gem editor are on the way.
One potential update could allow users to set certain Gems as default. It's still unclear how this feature will work, but it will likely be an option in the context menu, where a specific Gem can be designated as the default. What this will actually do remains uncertain—whether it will make the default Gem the starting point for new chats, or whether creating a new Gem will copy from the one marked as default.
More significant features may be coming to the Gem editor as well. For instance, users might soon be able to add descriptions to their Gems and possibly enable a checkbox to share Gems with others. This feature appears to be in development for trusted testers, and it's uncertain whether it will be released widely or in a different form.
Additionally, the most notable upcoming feature could be the ability to upload files to a Gem, creating a knowledge base that the Gem can reference in future interactions. This is similar to a feature on ChatGPT. On Gemini, there could be different ways to upload files—through normal file upload, via Google Photos, or even through voice recording. However, it's still unclear if this functionality will be released to production in this exact form.
The knowledge base feature already seems to be functioning. If you create a Gem with this knowledge base through the hidden UI, it will continue to reference this knowledge base in future interactions, even if the feature is no longer enabled. This might have been available to Gem testers before the public rollout, so we can potentially expect these features to become widely available soon.
Regarding updates, although several were scheduled for August 28th, only the Gems feature was announced. It seems some announcements may have been delayed to August 29th, so we might receive more information soon. However, the specifics are still unclear, especially considering that past releases like Gemini Live, Image Gen 3, and updated Gemini models haven't been fully addressed in the updates yet.
