Key Points:
- TCL’s new QM9K smart TVs will ship with Google Gemini built in, enhancing recommendations, search and interactions across Google TV and supported apps.
- Gemini-equipped TVs will use far-field microphones to let viewers control smart home devices and converse with their TV in natural language.
- A Google executive said the company is hopeful the inclusion of Gemini will convince streamers to leave their TVs on throughout the day.
TCL is bringing Google’s latest artificial intelligence technology directly to living rooms.
This week, the electronics manufacturer announced a new line-up of smart TVs that will be among the first to offer Google Gemini right out of th ebox. The flagship QM9K televisions will use Gemini to enhance content recommendations, search and on-screen interactions across the home screen and supported streaming apps.
“With the new QM9K, TCL is proud to offer the industry’s first TV series with Gemini,” said Scott Ramirez, the Vice President of Product Marketing and Development for TCL’s home theater business.
The QM9K series builds on TCL’s QD-Mini LED technology, offering up to 30 percent higher peak brightness and 57 percent more local dimming zones than its predecessor, the QM8K. The televisions also include TCL’s Halo Control System for improved contrast, a wide viewing angle panel and an edge-to-edge “ZeroBorder” design. Gemini integration will also support Google TV’s new Ambient Display feature.
TCL said the addition of Gemini marks “a major milestone in picture quality and the evolution of interactive TV,” allowing its premium sets to deliver not just sharper images but also smarter, more-contextual experiences.
In an interview with tech publication StreamTV Insider, a Google executive said the integration of Gemini into smart TVs will hopefully convince streamers to leave their TV sets on throughout the day.
Smart TVs with Gemini will benefit from the integration of far-field microphones, which will allow streamers to use their voice to control smart home appliances and devices using their TVs — just as they would with a Google Assistant-powered smart speaker.
“The premise is, if your TV has a far-field microphone, you can talk to it at any given time,” Shalini Govil-Pai, the Vice President and General Manager of Android TV at Google, told the publication.
Google Assistant was limited in this capacity — it was mainly integrated into smart TVs and Android TV devices as a way to open apps and search for content across them. With Google Gemini, smart TVs can harness the power of what Govil-Pai calls “very natural language conversation capabilities” — in other words, you can have a conversation with your TV, using natural language and sentence structure, just as you would a human assistant.
People are already growing comfortable using natural language and sentence structure to interact with artificial intelligence: A recent study from Adobe found one out of four people turn to a conversational chatbot like Gemini or ChatGPT when they first start looking for things online.
Smart speakers helped bring that same practice to American homes, with Google and Amazon long allowing shoppers to search for products and order them using just their voice.
Over the past year, Google has focused on ways streamers can do more with their smart TVs beyond watching TV and shopping. Last year, the company retired its successful Chromecast with Google TV dongles in favor of a new device called the Google TV Streamer, a $100 box that is intended to serve as a smart home hub as much as it is a streaming TV gadget.
By embedding Google’s most advanced AI directly into its top-tier televisions, TCL and Google are betting that smarter interfaces will help differentiate those new smart TVs in a crowded connected TV market.
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