Google Tests Remy, A 24/7 Gemini AI Agent That Acts For You

Google is testing an always-on AI agent called Remy that buys things, sends documents, and runs errands across Gmail, Calendar, Drive, WhatsApp, and Spotify with little human input, according to Business Insider’s reporting on internal Google documents. The project is in a staff-only “dogfooding” build of the Gemini app and reframes Gemini as a 24/7 worker, not a chat window. Google declined to comment.

The reveal landed three days after Google quietly killed Project Mariner, the company’s first browser-driving agent, on May 4. The two events are linked. Mariner’s team and code were folded into the new effort, and Remy looks like the system Google wants on stage when Google I/O opens at the Shoreline Amphitheater on May 19.

What Remy Actually Does When You’re Not Looking

Internal strings dug out of the Google app 17.20 beta describe Remy as “Your 24/7 digital partner.” Its greeting line is blunt: What can I get done for you today? The agent is meant to take action, not chat.

App strings surfaced by 9to5Google’s teardown of Gemini Agent say it can communicate with others, share documents, and make purchases on a user’s behalf. It pulls from chats, Connected Apps, Personal context, Personal Intelligence, Agent files, and live location.

The interface change is the giveaway. Instead of one scrolling chat, the Gemini drawer gets dedicated lanes for completed tasks, in-progress tasks, tasks waiting on user input, and scheduled tasks. You pin them, rename them, and reopen them later. That is a project tracker, not an assistant.

Why Google Killed Project Mariner First

On May 4, 2026, the Project Mariner landing page swapped its product copy for a goodbye note: “Thank you for using Project Mariner. It was shut down on May 4th, 2026 and its technology voyaged to other Google products.” No press release. No blog post.

Mariner had a real problem. It worked by taking screenshots of websites, identifying buttons, and typing like a human. That visual approach is slow, expensive, and brittle. The agent was also gated behind a $249.99 a month Google AI Ultra plan, which limited its real-world testing pool.

1. December 2024: Google unveils Mariner as a Chrome extension that browses the web for you.
2. May 2025: Google I/O upgrade lets Mariner run up to 10 tasks at once.
3. Early 2026: Auto Browse rolls into Chrome for Pro and Ultra users in the US.
4. May 4, 2026: Mariner’s site goes dark. The team migrates to the Remy effort.
5. May 6, 2026: Internal Remy documents leak to Business Insider.

The shutdown timing is not coincidence. Mariner’s visual browsing was already losing the architecture argument inside the industry. API-driven agents, the kind OpenAI and Anthropic ship, are cheaper to run and easier to keep accurate. Google is betting Remy can hit both: API hooks into its own apps, plus the Auto Browse muscle when no API exists.

The Data Tradeoff Nobody Wants To Read

An agent that books your dentist, pays your bills, and emails your boss has to know your schedule, your bank, your boss, and where you are at 4 PM on Thursday. Google calls that bundle “personal context.” Critics will call it something else.

The Connected Apps list reported by Phandroid’s review of internal documents includes Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Keep, Tasks, GitHub, WhatsApp, Spotify, and Google Photos. That is most of a working adult’s digital life. The agent reads it, remembers it, and acts on it without confirming each step.

Google ships warnings with the build. Internal disclaimer text says Remy “can make mistakes and expose data unintentionally,” and tells users not to rely on it for legal, medical, or financial work. Users can clear browser data, turn off Personal Intelligence, disconnect apps, and edit what Personal context Gemini retains in Settings.

Be clear with your requests, and take care when asking it to do sensitive tasks. Supervise its tasks and actions in your dashboard.

That is the warning Google embedded in the beta itself, according to the 9to5Google teardown. The phrasing is striking. Supervise. Google is admitting the agent will act, fail, and possibly leak something, and that the user is the safety net.

The $250 Question

Remy’s first home is almost certainly the Google AI Ultra plan, which costs $249.99 a month and is currently the only tier with access to Gemini Agent in the United States. Google’s published Gemini subscription tiers reserve agentic features, Project Mariner’s old slot, Jules coding agent, and the highest Gemini 3 Pro limits for Ultra subscribers.

The pricing is steep on purpose. ChatGPT Pro runs $200 a month. Anthropic’s Claude Max 20x sits below that. Google’s bet is that the people who will pay $250 are the people who already live inside Gmail, Drive, and Calendar all day, and who want one button that handles the small jobs eating their week.

A cheaper tier is also in the pipeline. 9to5Google’s reporting on the “Neon” codename plan shows Google preparing an “AI Ultra Lite” tier between the $20 Pro and the $250 Ultra plans. Industry watchers expect a $100 a month landing point, mirroring what OpenAI and Anthropic have rolled out.

Why Sundar Pichai Is In A Hurry

Remy is Google’s answer to a market that moved without it. OpenAI’s ChatGPT agent launch in July 2025 already merged Operator’s web-browsing skills with deep research and the ChatGPT chat layer. Tasks finish in 5 to 30 minutes. The system runs inside its own virtual computer.

Then came OpenClaw. The open-source autonomous agent racked up more than 100,000 GitHub stars in under a week, drove secondhand MacBook prices in China up roughly 15%, and earned a Jensen Huang quote calling it “definitely the next ChatGPT.” OpenAI hired its creator in February. Anthropic countered with Claude Cowork and a developer-focused agent called Orbit. Meta is testing one named Hatch.

Here is the structural advantage Google still owns. It controls the inbox, the calendar, the document layer, the photo library, the search box, and the Android operating system on roughly three billion devices. OpenAI has to drag users into a separate app. Google can drop Remy into surfaces people already open every morning.

“The integrations are deep: Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Drive, Search. All first-party Google services, all controlled by the same company,” wrote analyst Michael Parekh in his AI Reality Decoded newsletter on the consumer agent race. “That is a real structural advantage over third-party agents trying to stitch together permissions from different platforms.”

The catch is execution. Mariner shipped, then died. Bard shipped, was renamed, and rebuilt twice. Sundar Pichai cannot afford a third agent that ships clever and breaks ugly.

What To Watch When I/O Opens May 19

Google’s two-day developer conference starts at 10 AM Pacific on May 19. The keynote is widely expected to be 90% about Gemini and adjacent AI products, with agentic AI as the headline theme. Sessions already published cover “intelligent agents” inside the Google AI stack, Android 17’s agentic automation, and Firebase’s pivot to an agent-native platform.

If Remy gets a public preview at I/O, three signals matter. First, the price. A demo locked behind Ultra signals Google is monetizing first and scaling later. A demo on the standard $20 Pro plan signals a real consumer push. Second, the action ceiling. Will Remy place an actual purchase on a credit card during the keynote, or will it stop at “draft email and confirm”? The first version is the real product. The second is theater.

The Permissions Problem

Third, the permissions UI. An agent that touches WhatsApp, Spotify, GitHub, and a credit card on file needs a consent flow no consumer product has nailed yet. If Google shows a clear, granular dashboard for what Remy can and cannot do, that becomes the trust pitch. If Google glosses past it, regulators in the European Commission’s AI Act framework will be the next people reading the documentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use Remy right now?

No. Remy is in a staff-only “dogfooding” build of the Gemini app, meaning Google employees are the only people testing it. There is no public release date. The closest thing available today is Gemini Agent, which is part of the existing $249.99 a month Google AI Ultra plan, US only, English only. Watch the Google I/O keynote on May 19 for any change to that.

Will Remy work with non-Google apps like WhatsApp and Spotify?

Yes, based on internal documents. The reported Connected Apps list includes WhatsApp, Spotify, and GitHub alongside Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Keep, Tasks, and Google Photos. Each app needs a one-time permission grant in the Gemini Settings menu. You can disconnect any app later, and Google says you can also clear stored browser data and turn off Personal Intelligence in the same dashboard.

Is it safe to let Remy make purchases for me?

Treat it like a new credit card with a teenager. Google’s own beta warning says Remy “can make mistakes and expose data unintentionally” and tells users to supervise its tasks. Until the public release, do not connect financial accounts, and review every scheduled task in the Gemini dashboard before approving it. Google explicitly says Remy is not designed for legal, medical, or financial decisions.

What happened to Project Mariner that I was using?

Google shut Mariner down on May 4, 2026 with no public announcement. The landing page now reads “Thank you for using Project Mariner.” Its core technology, including the browser-control system, was absorbed into Gemini Agent and Chrome’s Auto Browse feature. If you had Mariner via your Ultra plan, your subscription stays active and the underlying capability now lives inside Gemini Agent in the same app.

How is Remy different from ChatGPT agent or OpenClaw?

ChatGPT agent runs inside a virtual computer OpenAI hosts and finishes most tasks in 5 to 30 minutes. OpenClaw is open-source and runs on your own machine. Remy’s edge is distribution: it lives where your Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Photos already are, so it skips the permission stitching other agents need. The tradeoff is lock-in. Remy will know far more about you than a third-party agent ever could.

Remy is the clearest signal yet that Google sees the chatbot era as a stepping stone, not the destination. The shutdown of Mariner the same week the Remy documents leaked says the company is willing to break its own past products to get there. The next ten days will tell us whether Sundar Pichai walks on stage at the Shoreline with a working consumer agent, or another promise.

Disclaimer: This article reports on internal Google documents and pre-release software referenced in published news coverage and code teardowns. Features, availability, pricing, and capabilities for Remy and Gemini Agent are subject to change before any public release and may differ by country and account type. Readers should not connect financial, medical, or legal accounts to experimental AI agents and should consult Google’s official terms and a qualified professional before relying on any agent for sensitive tasks. All figures are accurate as of publication.