Gemini can do a lot these days; it’s not just about answering questions or generating images. You can vibe code entire games and apps, perform deep research and even turn content into guided learning. Chatbot possibilities are endless, but one powerful feature that drew early attention has since been tucked away into the settings menu: Gems.
Gems operate Custom GPTs in ChatGPT. They’re custom chatbots that remember your instructions, so you don’t have to explain everything again each time you return. Once you’ve set a Gem’s instructions and function, you can continue to add to it so that it becomes an expert in that subject and can help you brainstorm, create and more.
With so many AI tools available from Google, it may be confusing to know when to use one tool over another, especially when two seemingly have a crossover in features. Below, we’ll detail how to get started with Gemini Gems and when you should consider using another option, such as Gemini Notebooks, to perform the task you’re trying to accomplish.
What are Gemini Gems? #
Google calls Gems “custom AI experts” that add blinders to a chatbot conversation. You essentially give the Gem its own “personality” and tell it what to help you with. You can also upload your own files, link to content in Google Drive, import your own code and connect it to a Notebook from Gemini Notebook.
If you always want a specific output from your Gem, you can set a default tool for it when setting it up. There’s no default tool set, which can allow for all outputs depending on the conversation you’re having, but if you only want videos, music or images set as the default tool while using your Gem, you can do that. Gemini has a handful of premade Gems that you can edit to make your own if you don’t know where to get started. There are options such as brainstormer, career guide, productivity planner, sales pitch ideator and more. If you need some additional inspiration, there’s an unofficial site of premade prompts for creating Gems, too.
Creating your own Gem is fairly simple, but it’ll only be as good as the instructions and knowledge you feed it. You can always go back and continue to add more instructions to your Gem over time. That said, you can make Gems as simple or as complex as you’d like.
I created a Gem to recommend movies for me. I kept the instructions very simple, instructing it that it has a wealth of knowledge about film and that its purpose is to suggest a movie that I might like to watch. To personalize the Gem, I added my favorite genres and a list of my all-time favorite movies to the instructions, so it doesn’t have to shoot in the dark from the beginning.
It worked great. Once I started chatting with the Gem, it began asking a series of questions to whittle down what it would recommend. It ended up working so well that the movie recommendations were three of my favorite movies that I hadn’t added to the list in the settings. I asked the Gem to add these movies to the instructions so it has that context the next time I ask for a movie rec. While it replied that it had updated my permanent taste profile with those movies, when I reloaded the Gem and looked into the instructions portion of the settings, those movies weren’t there. Being able to update a Gem’s instructions directly in the chat would definitely be a useful added feature. This is in comparison to something like Claude’s Projects, which was able to recall additional movies I had fed it within a different chat.
How to create a Gem #
Gems used to be displayed prominently in Gemini but have since been tucked away in another menu. You can only create Gems on the web app, but they can be used within mobile apps.
- Log in to Gemini.
- Click the Settings cog on the bottom of the left sidebar.
- Click Gems.
From here, you can choose a premade Gem by Google or click **+ Create New**.
If you opt to create a new Gem, you’ll be presented with a configuration screen. Here’s how to work through this process:
- Give your Gem a name.
- Provide a short description of what the Gem will do.
- Give your Gem instructions.
- Choose a default tool (or don’t).
- Optionally upload files.
- Click Save.
Need more help with creating Gems? Google has a guide to get the most out of them.
Gem vs. regular Gemini #
It’s true that Gemini is powerful and can take on any task that a Gem can, but there are a couple of reasons why you’d want to opt for the latter.
First, Gems retain a consistent persona based on your instructions. With standard Gemini chats, you would have to specify your desired persona each time you start a new session.
Another advantage of using a Gem is that you can add files and documents to its settings once, rather than up them again in every Gemini chat.
Gems can be more consistent in their replies within their assigned expertise, making them a better single-purpose use case than a broader option such Gemini.
Gems and Notebooks #
Gems can be incredibly useful tools, but they might not always be exactly what you need. They’re essentially specialized AI chatbots that use the context you provide, and then scour the internet to find the answer for you.
If you’re looking to keep the answers you receive grounded in only the information you’ve provided, then Gemini Notebook (previously NotebookLM) will be the better option. The Notebook treats the sources you provide as authoritative and bases its answers solely on that material. In a small test, I wanted to see what happened when I added a Notebook to my Gem. I created a Gemini Notebook with a small list of my favorite movies that I didn’t list in the instructions of the Gem. When I asked about my favorite movies, it listed both the titles I’d given the Gem and those I’d added only to the Notebook. That was the expected behavior, and it produced even better recommendations. Connecting a Notebook to a Gem doesn’t restrict the Gem to those sources: It can still pull information from the internet while using the Notebook for additional context.