Google retires Gemini's Gems and turns them into more technical 'skills'

Google has announced the end of Gems, the Gemini feature that let users create custom AI assistants for specific tasks. The company has begun showing a notice inside the Gemini app warning that, from 17 November 2026, Gems will cease to exist as such and will become 'skills', a format designed to be used across different tasks within the app.

According to Google, the work users had already put into setting up their Gems will not be lost: the migration to skills will be automatic, with nothing required from the user, and Gems will keep working normally until that November cutoff date.

Gems launched in 2024 with the idea that users could 'teach' their AI to perform certain tasks without having to repeat the same instructions every time. Google offered several preset Gems, such as a learning coach, a brainstorming assistant, a career guide, a coding partner and a writing editor. Users could also create their own —a running coach, a nutritionist or a trip planner, for example— and share them with other people, something Google hoped would give the Gemini app more visibility and popularity.

The change comes at a time when all-in-one AI agents, such as Meta's Muse and Instinct, are gaining ground. The original TechCrunch article notes that this move is another example of Google's tendency to launch each new AI feature with its own brand, icon and prominent spot in the app's navigation, only to reorganise everything later and fold one feature into another. The piece recalls that this way of operating is neither new nor exclusive to the AI era: in the past, the company ran several messaging and communication apps in parallel at the same time.

Another point the analysis underscores is that, even as skills, these custom assistants will still not be as easy for a general audience to use as simply typing free text to a chatbot, in the style of Meta's Muse. To use a skill within a task thread in Gemini, users will have to type a slash ('/') and select it from a list, an interaction that —it is noted— tends to be more comfortable for technical or engineering profiles than for the average user.

News of the Gems shutdown first emerged over the weekend through a post by 9to5Google.