I put Google’s 24/7 AI assistant Gemini Spark to work, and it’s actually pretty useful

我试用了谷歌全天候 AI 助手 Gemini Spark，它确实相当好用

Gemini Spark is Google’s new 24/7 agentic assistant, designed to help you “navigate your digital life,” which essentially means getting your online to-dos done, summarizing the things you don’t have time to read (like the entirety of your inbox), or organizing something that would have otherwise involved too much screen time-filled manual labor, like a personal expenses spreadsheet. Gemini Spark 是谷歌全新的全天候智能代理助手，旨在帮助你“驾驭数字生活”。简单来说，它能帮你完成在线待办事项、总结你没时间阅读的内容（比如收件箱里的所有邮件），或者整理那些原本需要耗费大量屏幕时间进行手动处理的工作，例如个人支出电子表格。

The service was first introduced at Google’s annual developer conference in May, where CEO Sundar Pichai joked that Spark, which runs on virtual machines in the cloud, means that “yes, you can close your laptop.” The in-joke here is that he’s comparing Spark to other agentic AI systems, like the ever-popular OpenClaw, which require keeping the machine awake to run its tasks. Spark, he’s suggesting, is agentic AI for the rest of us — those who would rather get things done without nerding out about it by setting up an always-on AI machine. 该服务首次亮相于五月份的谷歌年度开发者大会。会上，首席执行官桑达尔·皮查伊（Sundar Pichai）开玩笑说，运行在云端虚拟机上的 Spark 意味着“没错，你可以合上笔记本电脑了”。这个梗的潜台词是，他将 Spark 与其他需要保持电脑唤醒才能运行任务的智能代理系统（如广受欢迎的 OpenClaw）进行了对比。他认为，Spark 是为我们普通人打造的智能代理——即那些不想为了设置一台全天候运行的 AI 机器而大费周章，只想直接完成任务的人。

In practice, Spark is still very much designed for work-adjacent tasks, given its integration with Google’s productivity apps like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, and Slides. (After all, how many times are you preparing a deck for in your personal life? Unless you’re a Gen Z creator explaining the latest meme to your chronically offline friends, that is?) Google also struggles a bit to come up with real-world examples that would convince someone that Spark is a “must-have” rather than a “nice-to-have” tool for personal use. 在实际应用中，由于 Spark 与谷歌的生产力应用（如 Gmail、日历、文档、表格和幻灯片）深度集成，它仍然主要针对与工作相关的任务。（毕竟，你在个人生活中会有多少次需要准备演示文稿呢？除非你是那种向长期不上网的朋友解释最新梗图的 Z 世代创作者。）谷歌在提供能够说服用户将 Spark 视为个人生活“必需品”而非“锦上添花”工具的实际案例方面，也显得有些吃力。

Among its suggestions for “personal productivity” is using Spark to scan your emails and calendar for the day and send you a recap with your top three must-do tasks,” which already assumes you are a person who jots down your to-dos in a calendar or email app, instead of a notepad (virtual or otherwise), or just keeps a running list in your brain. (E.g., Grab prescriptions and shampoo at Walgreens. Buy more dog food. Hang out with friends on Saturday.) Google also suggests you could use Spark as a weekend planner, by drafting a Google Doc “suggesting three free activities based on my open calendar blocks for the upcoming weekend,” which, again, assumes you are some sort of scheduling nerd in your offline life. 在它提出的“个人生产力”建议中，包括让 Spark 扫描你当天的邮件和日历，并为你发送一份包含三项最重要待办事项的摘要。这预设了你是一个习惯在日历或邮件应用中记录待办事项的人，而不是使用记事本（虚拟或其他形式），或者仅仅把清单记在脑子里。（例如：去 Walgreens 取处方药和洗发水。买狗粮。周六和朋友聚会。）谷歌还建议你可以把 Spark 当作周末规划师，通过起草一份谷歌文档，“根据我周末的空闲时间段推荐三项免费活动”。这再次预设了你在现实生活中是一个热衷于日程安排的人。

Nevertheless, with early access to Gemini Spark, I decided to put it through its paces, with what are perhaps some real-world suggestions of my own. I came away surprised that it was a fairly useful implementation of consumer AI, but not one that deserves to have its own brand. 尽管如此，在获得 Gemini Spark 的抢先体验权后，我决定亲自测试一下，并提出了一些我认为更符合现实的建议。最终我感到惊讶的是，它确实是一个相当实用的消费级 AI 实现，但似乎还没到需要拥有独立品牌的程度。

Finding Savings

寻找优惠

For one initial task, I asked Spark for help with a shopping-related research. The idea was to help me with an everyday local drugstore trip for household items, so I asked Spark for product suggestions based on weekly deals and coupons I could clip. 作为第一个任务，我请求 Spark 协助进行一项与购物相关的调研。我的想法是让它帮我处理一次去当地药店购买日用品的日常行程，所以我让 Spark 根据每周优惠和我可以领取的优惠券提供产品建议。

At first, Spark seemed to do pretty well here, as it told me exactly what products were on sale that matched my needs, and suggested coupons to clip in the Walgreens app for extra savings. It even suggested how I could stack coupons for one item by combining online promo codes, if I were placing an online pick-up order and was planning to spend more on personal care items. However, as is often the case with AI, the devil was in the details, as one of the promo codes was invalid when I tried it, despite meeting what the AI said were the requirements. Still, Spark pointed me to some other savings — like buy-one-get-one-free and rewards deals that made up for this gaffe. 起初，Spark 在这方面的表现相当不错，它准确地告诉了我哪些符合我需求的商品正在打折，并建议我在 Walgreens 应用中领取优惠券以获得额外折扣。它甚至建议我如果进行在线下单自提，且打算在个人护理用品上多花点钱，该如何通过组合在线促销代码来叠加优惠。然而，正如 AI 经常出现的情况一样，细节决定成败——其中一个促销代码在我尝试时失效了，尽管我完全符合 AI 所说的使用条件。不过，Spark 还是为我指出了其他优惠方式，比如“买一送一”和奖励活动，弥补了这次失误。

Planning a packing list for a day trip

为一日游规划行李清单

In another test, I asked Gemini for help with a packing list for a day trip out of town. I asked it to check the weather, gather the event details, and make suggestions of what to bring with us, like sunscreen or water, to see what it would come up with, after it learned more about the activity. I asked for the final list to be imported into Google Keep. 在另一个测试中，我请求 Gemini 帮我列一份出城一日游的行李清单。我让它查看天气、收集活动详情，并根据对活动的了解，建议我们需要带什么，比如防晒霜或水。我要求将最终清单导入到 Google Keep 中。

Guess what Spark can’t do? Use Google Keep. That’s a huge oversight, given that Google’s notetaking app would be essential for anything in the realm of personal productivity. Instead, it offered to make me a doc or draft me an email because, sure, that’s the sort of thing I’d want to check for my list of to-brings. (??) 猜猜 Spark 做不到什么？它无法使用 Google Keep。这是一个巨大的疏忽，因为谷歌的这款笔记应用对于任何个人生产力任务来说都是必不可少的。相反，它提议为我创建一个文档或起草一封邮件，因为——当然了——这正是我在查看携带物品清单时想要的方式。（？？）

In terms of the list itself, however, Spark was spot-on, suggesting lawn chairs or blankets, water, sunscreen, sunglasses, a light layer for when the sun goes down, a reusable shopping bag, and an umbrella for possible light showers that day. It also reminded me that dogs were not allowed, despite the event being outdoors. (Sorry, Princess!) 不过，就清单本身而言，Spark 的建议非常到位，它提到了折叠椅或毯子、水、防晒霜、太阳镜、日落后穿的薄外套、可重复使用的购物袋，以及应对当天可能出现的小雨的雨伞。它还提醒我该活动不允许携带宠物狗，尽管活动是在户外举行。（抱歉了，Princess！）

Summer Camp / Activity Suggestions

夏令营/活动建议

My child has aged out of summer camps for kids (and should probably just get a job), but before we went that route, I wanted to scour the local area to find out if there were any summer activities available for teens that she could do in addition to her engineering camp in June. I asked Spark to do a thorough search and find any and all suggestions, keeping in mind that we would not want to drive more than around 30 minutes. 我的孩子已经过了参加儿童夏令营的年龄（或许她该去找份工作了），但在那之前，我想在当地搜寻一下，看看除了六月份的工程夏令营外，还有没有适合青少年的暑期活动。我让 Spark 进行彻底搜索并提供所有建议，同时考虑到我们不想开车超过 30 分钟。

Spark generated a decent list of ideas for activities that matched my child’s interests, and plotted out how far they were from home. Unfortunately, I forgot to prompt Spark to get the costs or dates of the programs, and it didn’t bother to tell me, which meant I still had to do more manual research on my own. Spark 生成了一份不错的活动清单，符合我孩子的兴趣，并标注了它们距离家有多远。遗憾的是，我忘了要求 Spark 提供项目的费用或日期，而它也没有主动告知，这意味着我仍然需要自己进行更多的手动调研。

Recurring Task: Summarize newsletters from email

重复性任务：总结邮件通讯

Like many, I subscribe to too many newsletters, so I put Spark to work on preparing me a weekly summary, which would arrive every Friday, focused only on the top five posts or articles I shouldn’t miss reading, along with a link. 和许多人一样，我订阅了太多的邮件通讯，所以我让 Spark 帮我准备一份每周摘要，在每周五发送给我，只关注我不容错过的五篇精选文章或帖子，并附上链接。

The AI got to work, digging into my inbox and, within moments, had presented a summary of several interesting articles to read that included… AI 开始工作，深入挖掘我的收件箱，片刻之后，它就呈现了几篇值得阅读的有趣文章的摘要，其中包括……