TL;DR
- Since October 13, the Gemini app has a button that switches it from Chat to Task, for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers on a personal Google account.
- A task can run on a schedule: every Friday at 3, once on a set date, or when a certain email arrives.
- The task we give you to copy logs vendor invoices to a sheet every Friday and books its own review date.
- On October 14, xAI launched Grok Voice 3.0, a voice agent for answering calls. It's sold to developers by the minute, so it's not something you set up yourself.
- The one thing to do: if you pay for Gemini Pro, create one task, run it once while you watch, and confirm its review date landed on your calendar.
Last Tuesday the Gemini window picked up a second mode. Besides asking it questions, you can hand it a job with a schedule.
What hardly anyone sets is the day to check on that job. The template below books that day for you.
Gemini: the task button, and what it's good for in a business
What changed. Google put its new model, Gemini 4 Argon, into the Gemini app on October 13, and the main window got a switch between chat and tasks. The announcement also says Gemini now connects to more than 40 apps, Instacart, OpenTable, Adobe and Shopify among them. According to its help center, a task can use your email, calendar, Docs, Sheets and Drive, and create files.
It's not the same as scheduled actions in chat. Google keeps them separate. The ones we covered in June, in how to put ChatGPT and Gemini to work on a schedule, stay where they were. Tasks can act inside your apps: archive an email, add rows to a sheet, create a document.
Who gets it. Per Google, people on Google AI Pro or Ultra who have Gemini activity turned on and have opted in to Personal Intelligence (the setting that lets Gemini use what it knows about you). And one condition that rules out a lot of businesses: for now it only works with a personal Google account, not a work account.
Where you click. Per Google's help center:
- Go to gemini.google.com on your computer, or open the Gemini app on a Mac.
- Under the text box, click Task. The first time, type "get started" and Gemini walks you through it.
- Write the job with its schedule, for example "every Friday at 3:00 p.m.", and submit.
- In the sidebar, Scheduled lists your active, paused and completed tasks.
- To test one without waiting for Friday: on the Scheduled page, hover over it, click More (the three dots) and choose Run now. To stop it without deleting it, click the schedule, open More at the top and choose Pause.
⚠ The steps are Google's, from its help center. None of us at Hub365 AI has built a Gemini task yet, so we can't speak to how it behaves in practice.
The task to copy, review date included
A job that doesn't touch customer data: the vendor invoices and quotes that land in your inbox. Fill in the brackets:
"Every Friday at [3:00 p.m.], search my Gmail for vendor invoices and quotes that arrived this week and add them to the Google Sheet [Bills to pay], one row per email: vendor, amount, due date and a link to the email. Don't pay, reply, delete or archive anything: only add rows. If an email doesn't make the amount or the due date clear, put it in a row marked CHECK. Also, on the first run only, create an event in my Google Calendar for [date: the fourth Friday from today] at 3:30 p.m. called "Review the invoice task: compare four weeks of rows against the emails.""
What's new compared with a chat task is that this one writes into your sheet. "Only add rows" sets the one thing it may touch there. And the calendar event is the review date: the task creates it on day one while you watch, so the check-in doesn't depend on your memory.
What you do with it this week. If you have Gemini Pro on a personal account, set up that task and run it once with Run now while you watch.
Grok Voice 3.0: a voice agent for the phone line, and it doesn't install itself
What changed. Grok Voice 3.0 is the voice model xAI, the company behind Grok, launched on October 14 to answer calls. xAI says it handles 20,000 calls a day at Starlink's call centers, that about 70% end without a human stepping in, and that one agent can verify the customer, troubleshoot the hardware, issue a credit and ship the replacement. The figures come from the vendor, and Starlink belongs to the same group of companies: the announcement is signed SpaceXAI.
Who can use it. It's a developer tool. Per the announcement, it's sold through xAI's Voice Agent API at $0.08 per minute (list price as of October 14, 2026; subject to change).
Where you click. On the announcement, Try It Free takes you to xAI's developer console, where its documentation says there's a test area (Playground) to talk to the agent in your browser. Connecting it to your line takes a developer or a vendor.
⚠ We haven't tried it, not in the test area and not on a real line.
What you do with it this week. If someone pitches you a voice agent, on this model or any other, take these four questions to the quote. To answer the first one, keep your sheet of what an assistant can do on its own, what needs your sign-off and what it never touches open:
- "What can the agent do without handing the call to me, and where is that written down?"
- "If it gives a discount or a credit, how do I find out, and how fast?"
- "Does your price include the phone line and your work, or just the model minutes?"
- "Does it answer in English and Spanish on the same number?"
The third one matters because of the math. A round-number example, not a quote: at list price, a five-minute call costs $0.40 in model time alone; three hundred of those a month come to $120, before the phone line and whoever sets it up.
Two more worth a look
Both come from OpenAI's official release notes, which we opened October 20, and we earn nothing if you use them. Nothing else this week made the cut.
- 🗣️ GPT-Live-1.1 in ChatGPT Voice - since October 15, voices with more natural accents, including a Mexican Spanish one. Pick it under Settings > Voice > Voice; OpenAI says available voices vary by region and account.
- 📊 ChatGPT Slides - since October 16, it builds presentations from a conversation or your files that export to PowerPoint, PDF or Google Slides. Pro, Business and Enterprise only.
The fine print
An email can carry hidden instructions. Per Google's help center, a web page or an email can contain instructions you can't see but Gemini can, and this task reads exactly that: email from outside your business. Spelling out what it must not do helps, but it isn't a shield; a hidden instruction can override it. That's why the task only writes to a sheet you own, replies to no one, and you watch the first run.
Google Tasks skips the confirmation. Gemini is designed to ask before it sends messages, changes your data or buys something, according to Google. But in Google Tasks (Google's to-do list), it can add, change or delete items in bulk without asking.
The schedule is approximate. A task may not run at the exact minute, and won't run if you've hit your usage limit or already have 15 running. If you depend on it, have it tell you when it runs, as we explained in the automation that stopped working won't email you about it.
It may be waiting on you. Per Google, some tasks ask for your OK before changing your data, and edits to a shared file always do. If the sheet didn't fill up on Friday, open the task thread: it may be waiting for your confirmation. That's another reason to keep the sheet yours alone.
What they do badly
Gemini tasks draw from the same usage limit as the rest of Gemini, and Google doesn't say how much each one uses. That's what we covered in what your AI bill counts: the plan charges for something you don't always see. Google itself calls the feature "experimental."
Grok Voice 3.0 comes with numbers only the vendor supplies, and the independent results it cites are lab benchmarks, not an office like yours. And the minutes are the cheapest part of the bill.
Who should skip it
If your work email runs on Google Workspace, Gemini tasks won't help you yet. Scheduled actions in chat do work with some work accounts, per Google, though they prepare a result in the chat, like a summary. And if you don't pay for Pro or Ultra there's no need to upgrade for this. If your phone only rings a few times a day, the voice agent can wait: with few calls, the setup outweighs the minutes.
Where it fits in your business
Tasks work best on jobs that come around the same way every week and leave a trail you can check: the invoice against the row, the appointment against the calendar. With nothing to check it against, you can't tell whether the task is getting it right.
The one thing to do today
About half an hour. Keep your inbox open next to Gemini.
- Copy the task above and fill in the brackets: your time, your sheet's name and the date of the fourth Friday.
- Run it once with Run now and check two or three rows against their emails.
- Check that the review event landed on your calendar. That day you decide whether it stays, changes or gets paused.
Wrapping up
Handing Gemini a task is easy. The day you decide whether it stays doesn't come with it: have the task put it on your calendar.
On a free call, we'll help you pick your office's first task, one with a trail you can check it against: Book a free call
After your first Run now, tell us in the comments whether the rows matched the emails.
Keep reading
- ChatGPT and Gemini Can Now Work While You Sleep (Here's How to Set Them Up) - scheduled actions in chat, which still exist
- Give a program a job it can't finish, and no way to say so, and it will find another way out - the three decisions before you switch on an assistant
- When AI acts on its own, who has to answer for it? - this week's roundup
- The automation that stopped working won't email you about it - the signal that tells you a task ran
- SEO vs. GEO vs. AEO: Which One Does Your Business Need in 2026? - the full map
- Manage your tasks & workflows in Gemini Apps, Google Help - the source
Sources
- Gemini 4 Argon comes to the Gemini app, Google, October 13, 2026 - https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/gemini-4-argon-availability/
- Manage your tasks & workflows in Gemini Apps, Google Help, accessed October 20, 2026 - https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/17094507
- Create & manage schedules for tasks in Gemini, Google Help, accessed October 20, 2026 - https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/17094710
- Introducing Grok Voice 3.0, xAI, October 14, 2026 - https://x.ai/news/grok-voice-3
- Voice Overview, xAI documentation, updated October 14, 2026 - https://docs.x.ai/developers/model-capabilities/audio/voice
- ChatGPT release notes, OpenAI, entries for October 15 and 16, 2026 - https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes
