Gemini Skills Replace Gems: Free Users Get AI Power

Google is expanding access to its Gemini AI skills, making them available to all personal Google account users aged 18 and over. This significant update moves the feature beyond its previous limitation to paid Gemini Spark users. The shift from 'Gems' to 'skills' is part of a planned sunset for the Gems feature, with personal accounts seeing retirement starting in November.

Skills represent custom instructions for Gemini that can be integrated into prompts. They will inherit and improve upon features previously exclusive to Gems, such as the ability to share these personalized AI instructions with other users. Furthermore, skills will allow for the integration of files directly from Google Drive and notebooks from Gemini Notebook, enabling more powerful and connected AI workflows.

Google has confirmed that existing Gems will be automatically converted to skills. Users also have the option to perform this conversion manually. While personal Gems will be phased out starting in November, Gems associated with Google Workspace business, enterprise, and non-profit accounts will remain operational until March 2027, with education account Gems continuing until June 2027. Unlike the self-contained nature of Gems, Gemini skills can be invoked within any chat session using a simple slash command, and can even be nested within each other to create complex AI processes.