Software companies have been talking about AI agents for some time, but I wasn’t impressed until I tried Anthropic’s Claude Cowork in January. I sat as the robot organized the scattered screenshots that littered my desktop into categorized folders without a single click, and felt convinced that this might be a turning point in how people interact with their computers.
Several other early adopters in San Francisco experienced similar moments when they created the massive OpenClaw bot earlier this year, not just to help complete a few tasks but to manage their entire lives online. Power users have tried to fully automate inboxes, calendars, text messages, and even run a vending machine with varying levels of success via OpenClaw. It’s not without risks, though, as you have to give these agents control over your data and your computer, and OpenClaw almost deleted an entire batch of emails from a Meta employee who was trying this
Whether it’s my daily schedule via Google Calendar or my dinner date through Gmail confirmations, Gemini Spark can dig deep into my personal information before I can even connect to a third-party integration. While the standard Gemini app can complete many of the same tasks, what sets Sparks apart is that it proactively collects details and takes action while you’re away, rather than waiting to be prompted.
Google offers Gemini Spark as a one-stop shop for completing tasks that people used to handle manually or do in other apps. The agent can look at your credit card bill regularly to report surprise charges – sorry, RocketMoney doesn’t need you anymore. Spark can be calibrated to automatically go through all of your preschooler’s emails and highlight key dates for the morning summary report. You can also send all your meeting notes to Spark and have it draft a Google Doc and create follow-up emails to the appropriate people.
This agent is getting a slow rollout, reaching a small group of early testers this week and launching next week in beta for subscribers to Google’s $100+ per month AI plan. It’s expensive to be one of the first people to try Spark! The company plans to allow Spark to connect via Gemini to third-party apps, such as OpenTable and Instacart, for additional automation opportunities in the coming weeks. Other imminent features on Spark’s roadmap include allowing the agent to handle your local browser and the ability to send text or email commands to the agent.
The ability to send text commands to your agent seems like a key factor in making the Spark experience feel really seamless. Instead of opening the Gemini app and getting distracted, I’ll spend all day sending text messages that raise my increasingly specialized requests, as if she were Andrea’s assistant. The devil wears Prada.
One of the key measures of success when trying this agent is the number of times it goes off the rails. “Spark works under your direction,” a Google Ads blog post about the agent says. “You choose whether you want it to run and which applications it connects to, and it is designed to ask you first before performing high-risk actions like spending money or sending emails.” Anyone who tries to use this tool risks using shareware backed by personal data.
Google plans to expand its proxy shopping feature to allow users to set spending limits and preferred merchants that Spark will stick to, though caution is crucial. “We think of it as if you were giving a teenager their first debit card,” says Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Labs and head of Gemini.
Just like the changes Google is implementing in search, which provides automation of agent tasks without having to leave the search experience, Spark is Google’s opportunity to push AI agents into the general zeitgeist. Let’s see if he has the spark needed to pull it off.
