Good news, fans of Android and AI assistants: the latest Gemini Live upgrade is now available to anyone with an Android phone set to English, without the need for a Gemini Advanced subscription. As long as you have Gemini for Android installed on your phone, you can start chatting with the upgraded assistant right away.

Here I’ll explain what’s new in Gemini Live and how to get the most out of it. And if you’ve never heard of Gemini Live and are wondering where Google Assistant went, I’ve got you covered. (If you really don’t like Google AI, you can talk to ChatGPT instead.)

Gemini is the name of both Google’s latest AI-powered chatbot app and the models it runs on, and Gemini Live is the latest way to interact with the app using your voice. It was announced at the Pixel 9 launch in August and was initially only available to users who paid for Gemini Advanced.

The ability to talk to Gemini on your phone isn’t new, but Gemini Live makes the chatting experience more natural in the same way that Advanced Voice mode on ChatGPT does. For example, you can interrupt the bot mid-sentence, you can pause conversations to come back to them later, and you can choose from several “natural” voices.