Google is bringing Gemini Spark, a background AI agent designed to run ongoing tasks without direct supervision, to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in Singapore over the coming weeks.

Spark operates continuously in the background — including when a laptop is closed or a phone is locked — to manage complex, time-consuming tasks under a user’s direction. Powered by Gemini 3.6 Flash, it runs on Google’s cloud infrastructure and connects natively to Google Workspace tools such as Gmail, Docs and Sheets without additional setup, and is available in English and local languages.

From reactive assistant to active agent

Google positions Spark as a shift from AI that simply answers questions to an agent that completes work independently, even while a user is asleep. Example use cases include monitoring flight and hotel confirmation emails to auto-update a trip itinerary spreadsheet, compiling a rolling weekend plans document from recommended local events, checking a pickleball booking app every week for court availability, organising wedding RSVPs and dietary restrictions from Gmail into a table for a caterer, auditing monthly digital invoices to flag subscription price hikes, and scanning an inbox to draft replies to customer inquiries. One example use case even has Spark analysing a user’s past 50 sent emails to build a reusable “ghostwriter” style guide for future drafts.

Guardrails on high-stakes actions

Google says Spark is designed to operate strictly under user direction: people choose whether to turn it on and which apps it can access, and the agent is built to check in first before taking high-stakes actions such as spending money or sending emails on a user’s behalf. That permission layer addresses a core concern with autonomous, always-on agents — that they might act on a user’s accounts without oversight.

The rollout extends Google’s agentic AI push into Southeast Asia, following similar background-agent launches in other markets, as consumer AI providers compete to move beyond chat-based assistants toward tools that execute multi-step tasks autonomously.