Google Axes Free Gems in Favor of Paid Skills

Google is reportedly planning to retire Gems on October 20, according to a notice found in the Gemini web app. The notice advises users to save their data and suggests they may be able to rebuild their Gems as Skills later.

The timing of this retirement has sparked concern among heavy users, who will need to manually rebuild each Gem by hand. This is especially true for Korean users, who have built large libraries of Gems.

Gems are free for everyone and sit in the Gemini sidebar, while Skills require a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription and live inside Gemini Spark. The retirement of Gems on these terms would move a free customization layer behind a paid product.