Google launched Gemini Spark at its developer conference in May. The short version: it is an AI assistant that keeps running in Google's cloud around the clock, even when you are not at your computer. You set up instructions once, and it acts on them on schedule.
At launch, Spark was locked behind Google's most expensive subscription tier: $100 a month at minimum. Today, Google opened it to the far larger group of users paying $20 a month for Google AI Pro, at least in the US. That is a meaningful shift. The $20 tier has a much bigger subscriber base than the $100 tier, so this is Spark's first real exposure to a mass audience.
What Spark actually does is worth spelling out plainly. You can tell it to check your inbox every morning and send you a summary of what needs attention. You can set it to draft a reply every time a specific contact emails you. You can point it at a set of meeting notes and have it produce a report in Google Docs. These are not things you type in and wait for; they are standing instructions that run automatically, on a schedule you define.
The feature Google calls "Skills" is essentially a reusable instruction set: you write a rule once, and Spark applies it repeatedly without you re-entering it. "Schedules" let you set time-based or condition-based triggers. You can run up to 15 of these tasks simultaneously.
For the global rollout, Ultra subscribers in most countries now have access too, with local language support. The exceptions are the European Economic Area, the UK, Switzerland, and Nigeria. Those four regions have been excluded since launch and remain so today. The EU and UK exclusions follow a familiar pattern: regulators there are scrutinizing AI tools that act autonomously on personal data, and Google is clearly not ready to clear that bar yet.
One detail worth noting for anyone outside the US on the $20 AI Pro plan: Google says access is "coming soon" in other countries, but has not given a date.
The pricing context matters here. When Spark launched, competitors like ChatGPT Pro sat at $200 a month and Claude Max at around $100. Google's $100 Ultra entry point was already a deliberate undercut. Bringing Spark down to the $20 tier accelerates that further. If the feature works as described, it becomes a concrete reason to stay inside Google's tools rather than paying extra elsewhere.
There is a practical caveat for anyone considering this. Spark currently requires a personal Google Account. Work or school accounts, the kind most professionals use daily, do not currently qualify. That limits immediate usefulness for people whose email and calendar live under a company Google Workspace account. Google has not said when or whether Workspace accounts will be supported.
The EU and UK situation is worth watching. Those are large markets, and their absence from every Spark rollout so far signals that regulatory approval for an AI tool that autonomously reads and acts on private email is not straightforward. Anyone in those regions should not expect access soon.