Now Gemini has quietly emerged on a Sony Bravia running Google TV, shocking owners and suggesting that Google’s next-gen assistant is leaking beyond its first wave of supported sets.
The sighting came by way of a setup screen that appeared following an update to the Google TV Home app, and it’s the first sign outside TCL’s flagship QM9K series that it might be enabled more widely; similarly, despite being months after launch, we haven’t seen this feature pop up on Google’s own hardware yet.
What triggered the Gemini setup screen on Google TV
The Gemini onboarding came through after a user had updated the Google TV Home app via the Play Store, on a Sony Bravia running Android TV 14. The wizard went through privacy and permissions, with the on-screen viewer being directly asked to agree to share data with Gemini before even allowing for voice. It also gave a choice of 10 voice personalities with botanical names — StoutGrove, Sprout, Beech and Ivy among them — echoing the voice palette that will be familiar to Nest speaker users.
It’s also worth mentioning that the sighting doesn’t appear to be associated with a coinciding firmware push. That sounds like a classic Google modus operandi: push the necessary app updates that depend on these new features, then flip a server-side flag for a small number of users to verify performance and reliability before opening things up. In other words, if Gemini isn’t available in the app for you yet, you’re just not in one of the current test buckets.
Sony Bravia sighting expands Gemini beyond TCL’s lead
For now, TCL’s premium QM9K TVs were the only well-established Google TV models with Gemini on board. Sony was not on early short lists, so this Bravia cameo is interesting — it indicates that the behind-the-scenes certification and readiness work is moving faster than anticipated. It also broadens the field at a moment when Android TV OS is one of the largest TV platforms around the world — Google has stated that it surpassed 220 million monthly active devices in that ecosystem, emphasizing how relatively small-potatoes pilots can have an outsized impact.
What Gemini Has To Offer On The Big Screen
For TVs, Gemini is designed to increase content discovery and household inquiries beyond standard voice commands. With the “Hey Google” hotword, viewers can ask curvy, natural-sounding queries — as in “find sci-fi movies like Dune that I can stream tonight” or “show comedies under two hours from the 1990s” — and get back context-aware answers. The assistant also retains old utility functions: quick how-tos, recipe ideas or help with set-up chores while you’re navigating inputs and apps.
These customizations to voice are more than skin deep. Google has leaned more on that approachability and oratorical consistency from speakers to phones to TVs with an eye toward a friendly personality across devices, but not without also accounting for privacy controls and the option to turn off hotword listening.
Why Gemini’s Google TV rollout appears staggered now
Television ecosystems are messy: different chipsets, far-field versus remote-only microphones, varying Bluetooth stacks and Android TV OS versions. Scaling a conversational assistant also involves gating features by app versions (Google TV Home and Google app), services (Play services), operating system (Android TV 14) as well as various regional compliance and accessibility tests. Community observers usually see these features being switched on in phases to catch regressions in telemetry before a broader release.
Complicating matters, Google has suggested that it will roll the software out to its own hardware, including its new Google TV Streamer, later than third-party sets. That convoluted sequencing further supports the feeling that Google is affirming OEM diversity first, and then preparing to complete its in-house experience ahead of a synchronized, larger PR push.
What owners of Sony Bravia and Google TV sets can do
If you own a recent Sony Bravia or other Google TV device, look for updates to the Google TV Home app and the Google app in the Play Store, and make sure your television is on Android TV 14 where available. Then open Settings and look for Assistant or Search, and try to say “Hey Google” to see if the Gemini setup comes up. Absence today doesn’t preclude eligibility; Google’s server-side rollout gates can open even without another download.
So here’s the bottom line: That live Gemini setup on a Sony Bravia is a pretty strong tell that Google, in this case, is looking to expand support beyond one brand, and from what we can see there will be no I/O whiffing about it come tomorrow. Google TV models will light up with the assistant soon, and yes, that includes Google’s own streamer waiting its turn.
