By Shannon Glennon, AI Technology Transformation Specialist, Syracuse University ITS
You have a Syracuse University Google account. Unless you are a preferred user of Google Workspace, you may not have found it yet. It gives us some more fun ways to use AI!
Sign in at www.gmail.com with NetID@g.syr.edu (note the “g.syr.edu”) and your NetID password (Note the g.syr.edu). (you might also need to sign out of your personal account first) . The Microsoft two-factor authentication prompt appears the first time and takes your regular NetID and password. Gemini, Google’s AI tool, comes with the account. Once you have logged in to your SU Google account, go to www.gemini.google.com to check it out.
Gemini can see
I use Claude Chat for most of my work, but it only knows what I type or upload. Gemini can look through your phone camera and talk with you about what it sees, live.
Put the Gemini app on your phone, sign in with your @g.syr.edu account, tap the Live icon in the bottom right of the prompt bar, allow access to your device’s microphone, then tap the camera button and, allow access to your device’s camera. Then just talk.
Try it: Point it at the copier flashing an error code and ask what to do.
Try it: Point it at the AV panel in a conference room you’ve never presented in and ask how to get your laptop on the screen.
Try it: Point it at the plant dying on your windowsill and ask what’s wrong with it.
Gemini can watch your screen
Same Live mode, different button. Tap share screen and it sees what you see.
Try it: Open the spreadsheet with the formula that won’t work and ask about it out loud, while you’re looking at it.
Gemini can make things
Ask for an image and you get Gemini’s image model, named Nano Banana. It handles text well, so a flyer comes back with the date spelled correctly instead of garbled.
Try it: “Make a flyer for a coffee hour for new staff, Thursday at 3 p.m., casual and warm.”
A copier, a conference room, a dying plant and a flyer. That’s a strange list, and that’s exactly the point. This is the kind of help that doesn’t fit neatly into “AI writes things for you.” Start by trying whichever one made you curious!