What you need to know
- Gemini will now let you create custom AI mini apps as reusable Gems on the web.
- The feature is powered by Google Opal, the brand’s no-code app builder available as a Google Labs experiment.
- With Opal, Gemini can build a mini app with a fresh user interface tailored to a certain workflow or task.
Google’s new AI tools often start as separate experiments, but make their way back to Gemini eventually. That’s the case with Google Opal, an AI-powered tool for creating custom mini apps available as a Google Labs experiment. Starting today, the technology behind Opal is available directly in the Gemini web app.
It’s an experimental Gem from Google that lets you build “reusable mini apps” and “unlock even more customized Gemini experiments,” according to a blog post. For those unfamiliar, Gems are custom AI chatbots that are experts at a specific task. You might use a Gem to take the role of a coach or a chess champion, for example. In this case, Gems created with Opal in Gemini are mini apps with visual interfaces and complex functions.
Opal debuted in July 2024 as a way to build AI mini apps by stringing together “actions” to create “workflows.” It’s a simplified version of app building that anyone can understand, and it supports text-based prompts, too. Unlike Google AI Studio or Google Antigravity, Opal is considered a “no-code” development platform that’s accessible to everyone.
Opal is not-so-secretly powering the enhanced Gems in the Gemini web app. However, the feature isn’t being branded as Opal in the Gemini app. Instead, a new banner in the Gems tab reads: “Build AI apps, a new kind of Gem from Google Labs.” This makes sense, because Google Opal doesn’t have brand recognition among average Gemini users, since it’s still only a Labs experiment.
To create a mini app Gem, users can pick a suggested prompt or type one in the text box. For guidance, the Gem creation chat window starts with “an app or workflow that…” to steer users in the right direction. You’ll want to describe in detail what you want your AI mini app to do, and Gemini and Opal will try to make it.
You can view a miniaturized and collapsed version of Opal’s visual editor in the sidebar after your app is created. The view “turns your prompts into lists of steps so it’s even easier to understand and edit how your mini apps work.” Power users can transition their chat from the Gemini web app to the Google Opal web app to use the Advanced Editor.
Google notes that Gems created with Opal are “powered by Google Labs, not Gemini Apps” and that a Gem “can make mistakes, so double-check it.”
After you save a Gem mini app, it’s available for future use in the Gems page of the Gemini web app. You can try it for yourself starting now in Gemini.
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