Summary: The hype around chatbots has faded. Now comes the real work. We aren’t building toys. We’re building talent—digital talent. Google’s “Gems” are not just AI companions; they’re highly trained, scalable specialists you integrate directly into your business engine. If your current tools still talk like bots, then you’re already behind. This post explains why Google Gems represent a clear shift in how we work with AI, how they stack up against tools like OpenAI's Custom GPTs, and where everything is heading for teams and entrepreneurs who care about consistency, quality, and leverage.
Beyond Assistant—Why the Terminology Shift Matters
What separates a grocery store clerk from a Michelin chef? Both can prepare food, but one follows instructions—while the other applies trained judgment. The same distinction now exists in AI. For years we’ve used chatbots that follow simple prompts. They're reactive: they wait for you to ask something. But they don’t adapt to your system. They don’t carry institutional knowledge. They don't think inside your process.
Google Gems shift that model. Instead of giving you a chatbot, they give you an operating partner—a handler of tasks that matters, trained on your exact processes. Once you change how you think about the tool, you begin to see the deeper opportunity: you’re not outsourcing answers, you’re training specialists.
Not Just Personalization—True Delegation
OpenAI’s Custom GPTs were a first step. They gave you the ability to stuff an AI with some rules and references. But the key limitation is still there: the model stays tightly siloed, defaulting continually to general-purpose behavior. You give it one task, it starts hallucinating answers from some Reddit thread. That’s not intelligence. That’s confusion dressed up as capability.
Google Gems were built on a different assumption: people don’t just need clever answers—they need reliable help. And not just help that’s useful today, but systems they can scale across teams tomorrow. That’s what makes the ability to share and role-position a Gem so powerful. When you create a specialist, you can assign it, standardize it, and actually manage it like part of your headcount. That’s operational leverage, not just novelty.
The Real Breakthrough: Shared Specialists
Before September 2025, Google Gems were only for personal use. That kept their power limited—like training your top employee but refusing to let them talk to the team. All of that changed when Google launched sharing permissions, which allow you to distribute Gems across your company or client base—just like software.
This one feature turns a tool into infrastructure. You can now build out Gems for marketing, compliance, onboarding, operations, and hand them to your team with clear rights: Viewer or Editor. It lets you codify institutional knowledge, embed judgment, and protect consistency. You’re not documenting your business anymore—you’re programming it directly into a staff of experts that never call in sick.
This Isn’t a Chatbot—It’s a Platform
Labeling a Gem as a “custom chatbot” is like calling Salesforce a digital Rolodex. It’s technically true, but strategically useless. A Gem is a configured version of Google's Gemini model—yes, like GPT—but you train it from your end. You give it the rules, expose it to the context, and upload the files it has to depend on.
The sting in the tail here? When you share a Gem, you’re sharing not just behavior but the blueprints behind it—its instruction set, naming conventions, and uploaded documents are visible to the recipient. That can be dangerous if you aren’t paying attention to compliance and confidentiality. Think about it like handing someone not just a model teammate, but the training manual and tactical playbook. You’d want to redact properly—or simply build a second Gem using sanitized versions for client-facing applications.
Builders, Not Just Users
There’s a dividing line forming among business operators. On one side are passive users—waiting for the next “AI feature” to land inside their favorite platform. On the other side are builders—using frameworks like Gems to build proprietary utility at the core of their operations.
Here’s what it sounds like when you talk to builders: They’re not focused on prompts. They’re focused on workflows. They don’t ask “how realistic is AI?” They’re asking “how do I replace ten hours per week, per employee, inside this department?” And they’re not scared of AI losing control—they’re scared of being outcompeted by teams who figured out how to embed capability faster than they did.
Isn’t that the heart of real productivity? Not more tools. Not more dashboards. Just systems that work because they’re being refined over time—just the way you’d train an apprentice. Gems aren’t smarter than you—they’re the ones who get your systems right every time, even at 11 p.m. on a Sunday.
How Do You Actually Use Them?
Creating a Gem is shockingly simple. You log into your Google account, navigate to the Gemini environment, and start defining:
- What is the task?
- What are its boundaries?
- What unique knowledge or documents should it depend on?
- What language or structural preferences should it follow?
You can then test it in real time. Adjust behavior. Add more context or upload additional PDFs. Once it’s stable, you decide who needs it and how much control they get. Share it with Viewer access for front-line teams. Give Editors more wiggle room for adapting tone and procedure. The value is proportional to the clarity of your own processes. Garbage in, garbage out—just like with real employees.
And What Happens Next?
Expect this: a shift from conversations about “AI tools” to conversations about “AI teams.” Gems don’t replace people, they replace bureaucracy. They execute structure at scale. They embody standard operating procedures inside a digital brain. As complexity keeps rising and margins keep falling, that kind of leverage becomes mandatory.
If you're a founder, coach, consultant, or operator—the question isn’t, “Should I try Google Gems?”
It’s: “Which roles inside my business require exact execution every single time?” That’s the job of a Gem. Build there first. Scale from there next. And before you know it, you'll stop describing your team as people and start describing them in terms of roles—some carbon-based, some code-based, all under your command.
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Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Zulfugar Karimov (GDoqnkmuktM)