Google is experimenting with a small, yet significant, alteration in Gemini: context-aware follow-up prompts, urging you to persist in that line of questioning. Instead of just stopping a session after one answer, Gemini will offer next steps — comparisons, definitions, pros and cons, or what’s next actions — right on the overlay and in the app.
The appearance is in line with what you might expect from many Assistant features with similar functionality, and from what we can see in a few early sightings, that seems to be roughly the scope of the rollout itself — this appears to be limited server-side testing.
It’s a classic growth lever for conversational AI: Frictionless, coach the user and extend the thread.
Why these prompts matter
For the most part, tech nannies are still treated like search engines: Ask them once and go. That practice underuses the one thing large language models are best at: using context. By providing smart follow-ups, Gemini reduces the cognitive load of “what should I ask next.
UX research backs the approach. Nielsen Norman Group’s “recognition over recall” principle demonstrates that users win when presented options instead of having to generate perfect queries. Google’s own People + AI Guidebook promotes “suggested next steps” to lead newcomers and lessen dead ends. Follow-up questions operationalize both notions in dialogue.
How it’s set up in Gemini
If you ask an open-ended question — say, “How do you make a car engine?” —Gemini has “discovered” suggestion chips, like “Compare engine types,” “Electric vs. gas,” or “Maintenance checklist.” They also appear after statements like “Planning a weekend trip,” spinning your intention into next-step action like “Draft an itinerary,” “Estimate costs,” or “Find weather and events.”
These recommendations are also context-sensitive and thread-aware, so they also shift as the dialogue progresses. In practice, that makes it more seamless to pivot: from explanation to comparison, from research to decision, from ideas to execution (like creating emails, tasks or summaries).
A nudge toward deeper, longer sessions
Gemini 1.5 has a very big context window of up to about 1M tokens in supported tiers, allowing it to remember and work over long threads, documents, and media.
The difficulty is encouraging users to actually engage with that depth. Follow-up suggestions are the on-ramp, prompting multi-turn exploration instead of one-and-done lookups.
There’s clear utility across tasks. In learning, prompts might direct from definitions, to worked examples and practice questions. When shopping they can seamlessly move from specs to side-by-side comparisons and total cost of ownership. In planning, they can go from thoughts to schedules, checklists and shareable summary.
Limited rollout, server-side control
As of right now, the feature only shows up in the Gemini overlay and app for a limited number of users and queries — indicating that it’s a controlled experiment. That’s in keeping with Google’s usual: ship plumbing in an app update and gate turning-it-on via the server. It’s a feature that will presumably vary by region, language, and account settings as the company tunes quality and safety.
Expect it to grow slowly as measures of engagement and satisfaction improve. In the past, Google has rolled out conversational features in phases that emphasize accuracy and guardrails in categories that sensitive, like health, finance and civic information.
How it compares with competitors
Competitors already rely on suggestion chips. ChatGPT frequently recommends follow-on prompts after answers, and Microsoft’s Copilot shows “Try asking” suggestions that pivot to comparisons or tasks propelling action. 3) PerplexityDistractor has guided questions that push more retrieval. And so for Google, bringing a similar pattern into echoes of Gemini — both as an overlay and in-app — is indicative of a larger shift: consultative assistants rather than reactive ones.
Benefits—and the guardrails required
Done well, follow-up prompts accelerate learnability, lower abandonment, and speed users toward outcomes. They can also reveal useful features — code generation, data extraction from files, multi-step planning — that many people are surprised Gemini is capable of.
But prompts cannot lead a user, overconfident suggestions of what to say, or frames that are biased. Clear labelling, safe defaults, and the ability to dismiss suggested content are a must. For sensitive subject matter, recommendations would encourage reputable sources, uncertainty and choices rather than definitive recommendations — an approach that aligns with recommendations across AI safety research communities and human-centered AI guidelines.
What to watch next
If the test balloons, expect closer integration with Google services: quick adds to Calendar, Drive, and Keep; citations for web answers; continuity between devices. The larger aim here is clear: retraining users to treat Gemini as a partner in multistep work and not just a faster search box.
Follow-up prompts are a minor UI adjustment with disproportionate behavioral consequences. They’re the ways in which Google intends to make the conversation continue — and, more critically, make those conversations more effective.
