If you are old enough to remember the mysteries of the internet in the late 90s, you may recall the fun “I’m Feeling Lucky” button for Google’s search engine that would take you directly to the first result of a search rather than the usual list. Three decades and a million sponsored links later, Google is looking to augment its Gemini AI assistant with a feature similar to one discovered in as-yet unreleased code by Android Authority. This time, the button will be a way of producing a random prompt.
Let fate decide what you should discuss with Gemini. Need a reminder to take your dry cleaning in? How about coming up with gift ideas for the holidays? All this and more will be unpredictably submitted to Gemini when you click on the I’m Feeling Lucky button. The button won’t be alone under the text box. Gemini will offer a couple of other random suggestions each time you start a conversation, with the lucky button as a permanent fixture alongside them. Gemini actually had random suggestions of ideas on its homepage when it first debuted, but Google removed them a little while ago to streamline the app’s look. The new look is minimalist but still offers random ideas.
It’s not too different from the suggestions for conversation topics you see when opening an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Perplexity. The difference is that you don’t know what you’ll get when you click on it. The button also has some nostalgia appeal thanks to its distinguished lineage in search engine history.
Lucky Gemini
Random prompts and the lucky button are about more than rosy memories of trusting the first search result to be what you wanted. Like its earlier iteration, the button and its accompanying random prompts help demonstrate what Gemini can do. Google wants people to use Gemini for everything. That’s hard to sell if people don’t know the useful or just fun ways to use the AI chatbot.
Reintroducing suggestions and giving them a twist with the lucky button helps Google educate users about Gemini and AI as a whole. It might be small in scale and somewhat piecemeal, but it could add up to plenty of loyal customers or positive word of mouth around Gemini.
Playing with random prompts could lead to users engaging with plenty of other upcoming Gemini features and abilities hinted at in future code. Google is planning a lot of upgrades to Gemini, from handling large amounts of code to a better memory for what you like, and even a role as a tour guide in your car.
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