🛰️ Inside the Google AI Universe: Every App, Service, and Tool You Need in 2025

Remember the era of the ‘chatbot’? It feels like ancient history. For years, AI was something you spoke to, you asked it a question, and it gave you a polished, if slightly robotic, answer. That was Version 1.0.

In 2025, we’re living in Version 3.0, and Google has been the driving force behind a profound change: the Agentic Shift. Google’s AI is no longer interested in just talking; it’s designed for doing.

We’re not looking at a single AI tool anymore. We’re looking at a vast, interconnected universe of proactive agents that can manage your diary, code an app, or edit a movie without you lifting a finger. If you’ve felt a bit lost trying to keep up, you’re not alone.

I’ve spent the last few months diving deep into the new ecosystem, Gemini 3, Project Mariner, Flow, and more, to map out this digital cosmos for you. This is your definitive, jargon-free guide to the new Google AI universe, from the personal assistant in your pocket to the autonomous agents working on the web for you.

🚀 The Core Engine: Gemini 3 and the Power of Deep Think

The foundation of everything is, of course, the model: Gemini 3.

Google’s latest model family, available in Nano (on-device, lightning-fast), Pro (the flagship generalist), and Ultra (the heavy-duty workhorse), marks a genuine leap forward from the models that came before it.

The real game-changer is a capability Google calls Deep Think.

This is not just a faster model; it's a smarter one. When you give Gemini a truly complex, multi-step problem, say, "Analyze this academic paper, identify the three biggest flaws in the research methodology, and draft a formal critique", it engages a special, slower reasoning mode. Instead of rushing to a surface-level answer, it spends minutes building a chain of logic and checking its own work, leading to much more accurate and insightful responses, especially in technical fields like mathematics, science, and coding.

It also introduces Deep Research into Google Search, which can browse hundreds of different web pages in a focused, methodical way to create a comprehensive report with citations in minutes, perfect for a business executive who needs a swift, high-quality market analysis.

🌌 Galaxy 1: The Personal Productivity Powerhouse

This galaxy is where AI integrates seamlessly into your daily workflow, transforming passive documents into active, intelligent resources.

NotebookLM: The Ultimate Research Wingman

NotebookLM is no longer just a summarisation tool. It’s a dedicated, 1-million-token context, AI research assistant built to analyse your private files, documents, PDFs, transcripts, and notes. Crucially, it respects your privacy; Google guarantees that your grounded data here is not used to train the public AI models.

The latest standout feature? Video Overviews. Upload a lengthy white paper or a stack of university lecture notes, and NotebookLM will generate a fully produced, AI-narrated video with animated slides, diagrams, quotes, and infographics pulled directly from your source material. This is a game-changer for revising for an exam or quickly onboarding a new colleague onto a complex project.

Google Vids and Workspace Integration

The AI is now woven directly into the fabric of your work life. Google Vids is the AI-native video app for work, turning a simple text outline or bulleted list in a Doc into a professional presentation video, complete with stock footage, voiceover, and soundtrack. And, of course, Gemini in Workspace can now sit in on your Google Meet calls, not just summarising the conversation, but automatically creating an outline for a Video Overview of the meeting in NotebookLM for anyone who missed it.

🎨 Galaxy 2: The Creativity Suite for Everyone

For a long time, high-end creative tools felt out of reach for the average person. This galaxy changes that, democratising filmmaking and digital art.

Google Flow: AI Filmmaking is Now Real

Google Flow is the closest thing we have to a 'text-to-movie' studio. Powered by the latest Veo 3.1 model, it lets you generate cinematic clips and scenes from text prompts or simple visual guides (like a quick sketch).

What makes it groundbreaking is its focus on consistency and control. It can maintain the look of a specific character across multiple scenes, adjust the camera angle mid-clip, and even let you 'remix' a scene by simply changing the style, turning a realistic video into something that looks like it was drawn by a Studio Ghibli animator.

Whisk: The Image Remix Engine

Whisk is Google’s high-fidelity image tool. While Flow handles video, Whisk specialises in image manipulation and consistency. It’s what you use to feed in an AI-generated character and then, with simple text prompts, have that character instantly appear in ten different scenarios while maintaining their exact face, clothing, and style. It turns simple image generation into a foundational creative asset management system.

🤖 Galaxy 3: The Autonomous Agents

This is where the 'Agentic Shift' becomes most evident. These tools are designed to take a high-level goal and execute a complex, multi-step plan across the web without you needing to supervise every click.

Project Mariner: The Web Delegation Agent

Think of Project Mariner as your personal web intern. You don't tell it to 'click here, then copy this text, then paste it there.' You give it a full, complex task: "Find the best return flights from Manchester to Tokyo for next March, book the one under £800 using my saved Virgin Atlantic card, and email the full receipt and flight details to my accountant."

Mariner then spins up a virtual browser instance, navigates the web, logs in, manages the transaction, and executes the entire workflow. It is an agent built for delegation, allowing professionals to offload tedious, multi-site web tasks that were previously impossible for AI.

Jules: The Silent Coding Agent

For developers and IT departments, Jules is nothing short of revolutionary. It is an autonomous coding agent that you can task with a development goal. Jules can build a new feature, convert an old piece of legacy code into a modern language like Python, and even proactively monitor a repository for bugs and quietly fix them while you’re out of the office. It’s a genuine, 24/7 coding partner that handles the tedious maintenance and migration work.

10 Real-Life Examples of the Universe in Action

So, how do all these individual stars and planets work together to create value? Here are 10 authentic scenarios where the Google AI Universe can be put to work today.

Professional Settings

1. The "Virtual Intern": Use Project Mariner to monitor competitor pricing across 10 different e-commerce websites and automatically update a Google Sheet every morning at 9am.

2. RFP Rapid Response: Upload 50 past project PDFs and client testimonials into NotebookLM and ask it to draft a brand-new proposal that perfectly matches the required tone and leverages your company’s past successes as evidence.

3. The Silent Coder: Assign Jules to convert an old piece of bespoke legacy software code (say, from an obsolete version of Java) into a modern, tested, and fully functional new language.

4. Meeting Transformation: Have Gemini in Meet not only summarise a call but automatically create a "Video Overview" in NotebookLM for all stakeholders who missed the session, complete with branded slides.

5. Executive Deep Dives: Use Deep Research in Google Search to analyse a new market entry, for example, the UK market for quantum computing startups, providing a comprehensive risk/reward report with cited sources in under five minutes.

   
   

Fun & Creative Settings

6. AI Travel Vlogger: Feed all your vacation photos and video clips into Google Flow and ask it to create a 2-minute "Studio Ghibli-style" animated travelogue, complete with a cinematic soundtrack.

7. Kitchen Assistant: Take a photo of your fridge with Gemini Nano (on your phone) and have it guide you through a recipe in real-time via Gemini Live, using voice-only instructions to keep your hands free.

8. The "Second Brain" Study Buddy: Upload your university lecture recordings and textbook PDFs to NotebookLM and have it generate a custom podcast where two 'hosts' debate the key theories to help you study for an exam.

9. Instant Interior Designer: Use Whisk to take a picture of your living room and, with a simple text prompt, see what it would look like with mid-century modern furniture or a completely different wall colour.

10. Interactive Bedtime Stories: Use Whisk to generate consistent main characters for a story, and then use Gemini to narrate it, changing the plot based on your child's choices for a truly interactive experience.

    
    

🗃️ Google AI Plan Comparison: Free vs. Pro

Access to this universe is structured through different subscription tiers. For the power users, the jump from the Free tier to Pro, and especially Ultra, unlocks the full agentic capabilities. All prices are based on the latest UK market rates.

🔒 Trust and Grounding: Keeping Your Data Private

One of the biggest concerns with AI is trustworthiness and data security. When using these tools in a professional setting, especially with confidential data, you need assurances.

This is why the concept of Grounded Data in Workspace and NotebookLM is so important. When you upload a private document into NotebookLM, or use Gemini in Google Docs, the model's responses are grounded, or fact-checked, against your source documents.

More importantly, your private documents are isolated. They are not human-reviewed, and they are not used to train the general-purpose, public-facing AI models. The experience is designed to be highly authoritative and trustworthy precisely because the AI is operating strictly within the confines of your secure, private ecosystem. This allows for professional confidence when handling sensitive documents and generating work products.

✅ Your 3-Step Action Plan

The Google AI Universe is here, and it’s no longer optional—it’s the new baseline for digital productivity and creativity. Ready to make the shift from talking to doing?

1. Start with the Core: Open the Gemini app (or head to the web interface) and try the new Deep Think mode. Challenge it with the most complex question you’d normally use Google Search for. See the difference that structured, multi-step reasoning makes.

2. Create a Notebook: Go to NotebookLM and upload a few of your most tedious, lengthy documents (e.g., a long work report, a dense PDF, or an old project plan). Ask it to generate a "Brief" or a Video Overview. This single step will change how you consume and share information.

3. Delegate a Web Task: If you have access to Project Mariner, give it a high-level goal you genuinely don’t want to do, like "Sign up for three different newsletters, confirm the email addresses, and create a folder for their incoming mail." Let the agent work for you.

   
   

The age of the personal AI agent has arrived. By embracing these tools, you are not just getting an assistant; you are adding an entire team of specialised expertise to your daily life. Which galaxy will you explore first?