Gemini wants to take control of your Android phone

The science fiction trope of advanced AI taking over the world has been around for decades. Now, no AI is (hopefully) powerful enough to take over the world just yet – even if Meta AI wants to take over your social media identity after you die – but Google’s Gemini AI is going to take over your Android phone very soon.

Gemini Intelligence was among several new features that Google revealed in a special episode of “The Android Show” in early May 2026. With Gemini Intelligence implemented directly into the Android operating system — which Google now insists on calling an intelligence system instead — the upgraded Gemini can autonomously use your apps, get contextual data from your photos and email history, and potentially even make payments on your behalf.

This has all been presented as something exciting, and some features, such as improved autofill, seem incredibly practical. At the same time, many users are concerned that Gemini has access to more data than ever before, including sensitive information like your ID and banking information. These changes come alongside many other new Android 17 features, starting with the Samsung Galaxy S26 and Google Pixel 10 phones as soon as summer 2026. Other devices will also receive Android 17, although it’s unclear whether they will also get Gemini Intelligence.

The main idea behind agentic AI is to enable Gemini Intelligence to perform tedious, multi-step tasks for you autonomously. Examples Google shows include asking Gemini to look up the manuals you need and automatically putting them in a shopping cart for you. Similar apps could involve booking concert tickets, finding tour details, and ordering and tracking food for delivery.

With Gemini Intelligence, some features now work across all apps. That means Gemini can look at a photo in your gallery, check the Gmail app for emails about your program, and then open eBay or Amazon to add all the books you need to your cart. This can also work on different tabs in Google Chrome, since Gemini is also integrated into the mobile version of Chrome.

Some of the most useful features include the new Autofill and Rambler tools. Google claims that autofill will now be able to fill in highly personalized details in all forms, compared to before, when it could only be used in predefined fields using information you’ve already filled in in the past. Depending on how it works, many might not mind disclosing more of their private lives for convenience. Rambler is another great feature, with fewer implications on user privacy. It’s an improved AI-powered text-to-speech engine that understands context and removes filler words and other confusing elements from messages.

Gemini Intelligence is not yet released. Without appropriate testing, we cannot be completely sure of the extent to which you can opt out. Since it’s an OS-level implementation, getting rid of it will likely be more difficult than deleting an app or disabling specific permissions in the app’s settings. However, Google said most of these new features would be optional. Enhanced autofill that pulls data from your gallery and emails, for example, requires explicit permission before you can access those apps.

Additionally, we’ve seen similar features with Samsung’s Galaxy AI in the S26 series – the same features some older Samsung phones are getting with One UI 8.5. With the S26 being one of the first phones expected to benefit from Gemini Intelligence, it’s possible that these features will work similarly to Galaxy AI features like Call Screening and Now Nudge, where you can disable some or all of them from Settings.