Deformation theory of associative algebras is controlled by Hochschild cohomology and usually involves an intricate obstruction calculus. In the case of gentle algebras, the deformation theory turns out to admit a nice explicit description. I will explain how (graded or ungraded) gentle algebras can be deformed as 𝐴∞-algebras or associative algebras. All such deformations admit a natural description in terms of the geometric surface model for their derived categories, which also illuminates the relationship between gentle and skew-gentle algebras.