Google’s Gemini makes smart homes smarter but still stumbles on basic common sense

Google Gemini

Gemini’s arrival in Google Home marks a major leap for the smart home experience, blending AI-powered awareness with everyday convenience. It’s an ambitious vision — one where your devices can identify events, answer questions, and summarise what’s happened at home without you lifting a finger. But as powerful as it is, Gemini still struggles with the same flaw that plagues most AI systems: misplaced confidence and oddly human mistakes.

After several weeks of testing Gemini for Home with Google Nest devices, the results are mixed. The AI delivers genuinely useful features, including Ask Home, Home Brief, and smarter camera notifications. With Ask Home, you can simply ask “Where’s my laptop?” instead of manually reviewing security footage — and in many cases, it actually works. Gemini identifies objects, timestamps events, and allows users to search their home history naturally.

Another standout feature is Home Brief, which automatically compiles daily summaries of what your Nest cameras saw, sparing users from scrolling through endless alerts. It’s an intuitive way to keep tabs on your home — when it works as intended.

However, Gemini’s accuracy isn’t always reliable. Its visual summaries often misinterpret scenes with overconfidence. In one case, it correctly identified someone cooking chicken in the kitchen, but in another, it bizarrely described a person removing a “bicycle” from a car — when it was actually a disc golf cart. At times, it confused a blue car for a grey one and mistook a leaf blower for a rake midway through an activity. While these mistakes are mostly harmless, they reveal how quickly Gemini’s interpretations can fall apart.

Some errors are more concerning. The Verge recently reported that Gemini failed to recognise a person carrying a shotgun, labelling it instead as a “garden tool.” It also missed identifying a knife — an alarming oversight for a system meant to enhance home security. This shows the limits of Gemini’s object recognition, which tends to play it safe when unsure, often choosing vague or non-threatening descriptions.

The same overconfidence seeps into Home Brief. The summaries can be oddly verbose — entries like “Ben sat on the couch” add little value — and while Ask Home is clever, its response time of 15–25 seconds can test patience. Still, these are beta features, and Google labels them as “Early Access,” meaning improvements are expected before full release.

Despite the flaws, Gemini represents a major step toward the future Google envisions: an AI-powered home that understands context, not just commands. Yet it also highlights a fundamental truth — AI can be incredibly intelligent, but still lack basic judgment. Google’s decision to make Gemini for Home opt-in seems wise for now, giving users control while the system learns to distinguish between a rake and a rifle.