"Hey Google, play the news... please?"

For the past few years, I've been making good use of a (perhaps?) little-known feature of Google Assistant on my Android phone when I wake up. Saying "Hey Google, play the news, please" activates a routine where it can play audio news articles from a collection of sources, including BBC local radio, CNN, NPR, Engadget, Podnews and many others, and I use it pretty-much daily to find out what's going on in the world.

In case you'd like to give it a go, here's a a guide from ZDnet to choosing which sources are available.

Then came Google Gemini...

As with much of what Google has done over the past couple of decades, things never stay the same, and - as the AI revolution continues apace (I wonder how well that will have aged when I look back in 20 years) - there's a push to use it as a 'go-to' resource pretty-much everywhere, despite some of the results being questionable, if not entirely made up.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I was prompted to start using Google Gemini instead of Assistant, and, since I was curious about how it all worked, I decided to opt in. What I hadn't been prepared for was that pretty much any request now gets processed on-line, and when I said "Hey Google, play the news, please", it reponded, in the voice I'd selected when I set it up, with "I can't help you with that, as I am a language model."

I think, as a society, we're just going to have to get used to things, without any warning, just not working any more - like the recent news of Moxie robot shutting down - when a system depends on an online resource and it either goes out of business or a decision is made to change the service or cease it entirely, there's really not much that can be done.

Clever people and workarounds

There will, fortunately, always be a community of engineers who can either find a workaround to an issue, or - for example, like Rebble in the case of the Pebble watch - entirely save a beloved product from being rendered useless.

After a bit of a Google search (skipping past the mostly unhelpful AI generated 'results'), I found this excellent Reddit post, which gives a guide to how to use the Gemini AI as default, but retain some of the Google Assistant functionality.

How to get Gemini to play the news like Google Assistant

Assuming you've got Gemini enabled, look for "Gemini settings" in the phone's settings, and tap on Google Assistant features in Gemini, followed by Routines.

• Tap the New button, and then Personal.
• Choose Add starter and then When I say to Google Assistant, and enter the phrase 'Play the news' (or 'Play the news, please' - it needs to be exactly as you will say it, and it's best to be polite, in case they ultimately become our overlords)
• Press on Add action, under Choose actions for this routine, and tap Try adding your own, and in the box that appears, enter 'Play news' and then tap Save, and Save again.

And that's done it - you can try it by holding the home button down and talking into the phone in the usual way.

Terms and conditions apply

Of course, with the ever-shifting topology of the internet, this might not actually work in a few years, months (hopefully not weeks), but I thought I'd post this blog just in case it's of use to anyone.

If you run a news organisation, you can add your own by following the instructions here.