Gemini, The Artificial Companion: A Rhetorical Analysis of Google’s “New Home” Commercial

As one of the groundbreaking inventions, artificial intelligence is developed conceptually from how the human brain sends signals through neurons. The fascination and complexity of this technology make it seem to emerge from a science fiction world. With the development of large language models, artificial intelligence marked the beginning of a new era in 2020 by gradually blending into human life (“History of Artificial Intelligence”). At the frontier of the era, Google, a well-known “American multinational technology” company, leads the artificial intelligence revolution with their dominant model officially released in 2024, Gemini (“Google”; “Google Gemini”). Additionally, a report conducted in 2025 highlights that the performance of leading artificial intelligence models started to converge between 2024 and 2025 (“2025 AI Index Report”). Consequently, this closing gap has further intensified the competition in developing artificial intelligence technology among leading countries and companies. In addition, Kennedy et al. show that half of all Americans in 2025 felt concerned about the increased use of artificial intelligence in daily life, which highlights how public views remain considerably negative toward this technology despite its rapid growth (“How Americans View AI”). According to Kennedy et al., the awareness of artificial intelligence among U.S. adults in 2025 continued to grow compared to previous years (“AI in Americans’ Lives”). This trend suggests that the world has witnessed a historical shift in human digital technology. As a result, Google captured this opportunity to launch a commercial named “New Home” during the Super Bowl 2026 to promote Gemini and address the challenges in public views. In their heartwarming commercial for young tech-savvy adults, Google narrates the story of a family moving to a new home, associates their product with freedom, and repeats the action of prompting in Gemini AI in order to evoke feelings of joy, cultivate creativity, and emphasize the reliability and usefulness of their product.

In the commercial “New Home,” Google starts a story of a mother and a son with an action of prompting Gemini to show photos of their new house in Glenville (Google 00:00:02- 00:00:10). The mother uses Gemini to visualize her son’s new room filled with things from the old house, change the color of the room, and add a dog bed to the room (Google 00:00:12- 00:00:29). After the mother prompts Gemini to show old photos of her garden, a flashback appears and stirs up the family’s memories (Google 00:00:39-00:00:51). The commercial ends cheerfully with a generated image blending into a scene of the family’s new yard, where the son is playing joyfully with his dog (Google 00:00:52-00:00:57). By utilizing storytelling in their commercial, Google subtly evokes feelings of nostalgia mixed with joy and warmly elevates close family ties through the narrated story of a family moving to a new home. Although anecdote is an option for this commercial, it limits Google’s power to freely modify the content to fit the rhetorical situation. Furthermore, an anecdote’s credibility is based on its author’s reputation and knowledge. By considering those restrictions, storytelling becomes a better choice in this situation because it allows Google to create their own story’s content and context, which helps deliver their message effectively to achieve their purpose. Moreover, according to Kumar, over half of Gemini’s users in 2026 are in the age group of 18 to 34 years old and are mostly male, which suggests that the main audience of this commercial is young tech-savvy adults. Martin et al. also show that the average age of U.S.  mothers that have children were around 25 to 34 years old in 2024, which cover a large section of the female audience (2). Therefore, Google features a mother with her son in their heartwarming story to directly resonate with the audience and draw more attention from female young adults to their product.

To properly guide the audience into the story, Google opens the beginning with a conversation between the mother and the son after the mother prompts Gemini to show photos of their new house in Glenville (Google 00:00:02-00:00:14). When the son first sees an empty room in the list of photos, he seems to doubt that it is his room and asks his mother for clarification.  After knowing that his new room is empty, the son expresses an uncomfortable reaction, which reflects a general sense of anxiety and discomfort when facing major changes in life (Google 00:00:13-00:00:14). Additionally, the mother places the image of the new empty room closely next to an image of the old stuffed room in Gemini (Google 00:00:13-00:00:15). This juxtaposition between the new room’s soulless appearance and the old room’s personal appearance highlights the contrast between unfamiliarity and familiarity. Furthermore, by showing photos of the family’s old garden, Gemini drives the story toward the past and evokes a flashback that stirs up the family’s precious memories of their time living at their old home (Google 00:00:45-00:00:51). Through the flashback, Google expands the story’s context toward the past to subtly evoke feelings of nostalgia that strongly resonate with young adults who have experienced moving to a new home. By highlighting the mother’s nurturing love for her son, the flashback vividly elevates family cherished values and unmeasurable bonds, which makes the story more engaging and meaningful. After extending the story toward the family’s precious memories in the past, Google shifts the timeline toward the future, where the new house is completely transformed into a new home. As the story reaches its climax with the timeline’s shift, the commercial ends with a scene of the son running and playing joyfully in the new yard (Google 00:00:53-00:00:58). Through the son’s happiness and the new yard’s landscape, Google vibrantly illustrates the family’s peaceful life after overcoming challenges to make a new house their true home.

By using storytelling to elicit feelings of joy and peacefulness, Google effectively shapes and strengthens the commercial’s heartwarming tone. As a result, the tone combined with feelings of joy in those moving scenes perfectly highlights the endless love and dedication of the mother in nurturing her family. Moreover, by choosing a heartwarming tone for their commercial, Google effectively shapes their appearance as an openhearted, empathy, and close person who openly shares their emotional story with the audience. This persona further strengthens Google’s trustworthiness and enhances the effectiveness of the appeal to nostalgia, which helps Google deliver the commercial’s message more effectively and emotionally. Additionally, according to Kennedy et al., half of U.S. adults in 2025 said artificial intelligence would worsen the ability to form meaningful relationships (“How Americans View AI”). This statistic suggests the motivation behind Google’s chosen tone and persona to emphasize the ways Gemini helps nurture the family’s new home, foster their relationships, and evoke their treasured memories. As a result, Google successfully illustrates the positive correlation between Gemini and families’ meaningfully close ties to shift skeptical views toward more positive perspectives. Ultimately, through the characters’ actions and conversations, Google successfully establishes a complete context for the story, evokes feelings of nostalgia, and guides the audience from a sense of unfamiliarity to a warm ending at the family’s new home.

In order to highlight how Gemini can gently cultivate creativity and personality, Google associates Gemini with freedom through scenes of it helping the family customize their new home creatively and personally. Each time the son sees his ideas turn into real images through Gemini, his creativity is inspired and encouraged, which motivates him to ask his mother to make his room blue, place his dog’s bed in the room, and add a trampoline to the yard (Google 00:00:19-00:00:33). The son’s actions and expressions emphasize feelings of excitation and curiosity when being able to easily visualize ideas through Gemini, which highlights how Gemini can inspire, encourage, and support new creative ideas. In addition, with Gemini’s help in visualizing ideas, the son actively and confidently suggests placing a trampoline in the new yard. This shows that he becomes more confident in conveying his opinions and thoughts. By focusing on how the son freely shares and applies his new ideas to personally customize his new home, the commercial emphasizes the significant importance of freedom in developing creativity, personality, and confidence. Furthermore, by associating Gemini with freedom, Google highlights how their product can stimulate that development in the audience. After Gemini evokes a flashback that stirs up memories from the past, the son curiously asks his mother if their new house will be like their old house, and the mother answers that it will be whatever they want it to be (Google 00:00:46-00:00:52). Through the mother’s statement, Google thoroughly embeds a sense of freedom into Gemini. Specifically, the statement implies that there is no limitation when using artificial intelligence to help develop or build ideas. As a result, Google successfully emphasizes that consumers have absolute control over creating their desired outcomes with Gemini. To make a final captivating impact on the audience for the ending, Google blends a soulless generated image of the new yard into a real livelier yard with extra garden plots and a soccer goal (Google 00:00:53-00:00:58). The differences between the generated image and the yard’s landscape emphasize how Gemini openly suggests solutions, ideas, and possibilities as references instead of constraints. By softly exposing that insight to the audience, Google conceptually strengthens the association between Gemini and freedom. Furthermore, Kennedy et al. highlight that the percentage of Americans wanting more control over how artificial intelligence is used in their lives in 2025 increased to 61 percent (“AI in Americans’ Lives”), and they also show that about half of U.S. adults claimed that artificial intelligence would worsen creativity (“How Americans View AI”). The evidence further supports why Google chooses to associate their product with freedom. By associating Gemini with freedom through scenes of the family freely making their choices to personalize their new home, Google emphasizes how they acknowledge consumers’ rights and effectively highlights how Gemini cultivates creativity. Through those choices, Google seeks opportunities to address public concerns and negative views.

However, there is a conflict between Google’s message and a real-world study. Although Google emphasizes how Gemini can cultivate creativity by associating it with freedom, Gerlich suggests that there is a significant negative correlation between the rate of using artificial intelligence tools and critical thinking abilities (24). Specifically, Gerlich indicates that the younger age group between 17 and 25 years old exhibits higher usage of artificial intelligence tools with lower critical thinking scores compared to older age groups (10). Because Google only shows how Gemini creates positive impacts on the audience, this finding about the negative effect of artificial intelligence tools on young adults’ cognition reveals an underlying tension between Google’s message and reality. By choosing to ignore this conflict, Google successfully builds a reliable and helpful image for Gemini, which strengthens their message’s persuasiveness and draws more positive views toward their product. By consistently repeating the action of prompting and using Gemini AI, Google effectively showcases Gemini’s features, highlights its usefulness, and fosters the reliability of their product. At the commercial’s beginning, the mother quickly shows photos of her new house in Glenville just by simply prompting Gemini for a few seconds, illustrating how well Gemini can search and manage photos in such a short time (Google 00:00:02-00:00:07). Through the scene, Google promotes the convenience of using Gemini to find photos within a device rather than searching manually, which highlights its productivity and practical use for daily life.  Additionally, through the mother’s action of prompting Gemini to visually move stuff from her son’s old room to the new empty room, Google highlights the potential and strength of Gemini’s ability in visualizing, arranging, and manipulating information within images (Google 00:00:13- 00:00:17). That effortless action further enhances the image of Gemini as a powerful tool for simplifying complicated tasks. As a result, Gemini appears especially handy for the audience when life becomes busier, such as during the age of starting and nurturing a family. Furthermore, the mother’s action of prompting Gemini to change the walls’ color in the room effectively highlights its capabilities in editing and manipulating image details (Google 00:00:20-00:00:22).

To further promote the strengths of Gemini in visual processing, Google effectively showcases a drawing feature when the mother draws a circle on an image of her son’s new room to add a dog bed (Google 00:00:26-00:00:29). By using this feature, the mother can explicitly specify the location in the image for Gemini to perform actions, which highlights how convenient and helpful it is in editing images accurately. Moreover, when the mother attaches an image to Gemini and starts typing a command before changing her mind, her action illustrates the appeal and reliability of Gemini (Google 00:00:29-00:00:34). This action also implies that Google acknowledges and respects users’ rights to decide when and how they want to use Gemini. By emphasizing the mother’s unconstrained control when using Gemini, Google builds a reliable impression of their product and shows that they value user experience. Through the scene of the mother prompting Gemini to show photos of her old garden, Google suggests that Gemini can preserve and evoke meaningful memories (Google 00:00:39-00:00:44). This scene also emphasizes how Google cares and values precious moments. By using Gemini as a medium that evokes the characters’ memories, Google creates a sense of familiarity that narrows the gap between Gemini and the audience’s personal experiences, which strengthens its credibility and reliability. Moreover, a poll conducted in 2026 shows that more than half of Americans thought artificial intelligence would “do more harm than good” in their daily lives (“Age of Artificial Intelligence”). This considerable number of skeptical views encourages Google to make Gemini appear more approachable and reliable for daily use by repeatedly promoting the potential, precision, and convenience of Gemini.

By utilizing rhetorical devices and thoughtfully making their rhetorical choices, Google successfully crafts a complete story that feels both joyful and nostalgic. Through the deliberate choices of the author, the commercial “New Home” effectively delivers the hardship in facing major life changes and the significance of family relationships. By ending the commercial with a message, “A new kind of help from Google,” Google reinforces the image of Gemini as a companion who unconditionally helps cultivate creativity, visualize ideas, and solve complex problems such as personalizing a new home (Google 00:00:55-00:00:58). With the world shifting toward artificial intelligence, Google’s commercial becomes a significant contribution to promoting its applications and improving the perception of the audience toward the use of this technology.

Works Cited

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———. “How Americans View AI and Its Impact on People and Society.” Pew Research Center, 17 Sept. 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/how-americans-view-ai and-its-impact-on-people-and-society/.

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