Google is notorious for having millions of similar products with confusingly different names and seemingly nothing in common. (Can I get you interested in a messaging app?) But when it comes to its AI work, there’s only one name ahead: Gemini.
Company announced on Thursday name change its Bard chatbot for Twinsfree a A special Gemini app for Androidand even bringing all Duet AI features to the Gemini brand in Google Workspace. It also announced the public release of Gemini Ultra 1.0, the largest and most capable version of Google’s extensive language model.
Gemini’s mobile apps will likely be where most people encounter the new tool. If you download the new app on Android, it can set Gemini as your default assistant, meaning it will replace the Google Assistant that responds when you say “Hey Google” or long-press the home button. So far, it appears that Google is getting rid of Assistant entirely, but the company has been prioritizing Assistant for some time, and it clearly believes that Gemini is the future. “I think this is a very important first step towards creating a true AI assistant,” says Sissie Hsiao, who runs Bard (now Gemini) at Google. “It’s conversational, multimodal, and more useful than ever.”
There’s no dedicated Gemini app for iOS, and you can’t set a non-Siri assistant as the default anyway, but you’ll have access to all the AI features in the Google app. And just to understand how important Gemini is to Google: at the top of the application there will be a link that allows you to switch from Search to Gemini. For Google’s entire existence, Search has been the most important product by a mile; This is starting to hint that Gemini might be just as important. (By the way, Google’s AI system for search is still called Search Generative Experience, but it’s safe to bet it will end up being Gemini.)
Other changes to the Gemini are mostly just branding. Google is ditching the Bard name, but otherwise its chatbot will feel the same; The same goes for all the AI features in Google Workspace apps like Gmail and Docs, which used to be called “Duet AI” but are now also known as Gemini. These are features that help you compose emails, organize schedules, and perform other work-related tasks.
Most users will still use the standard version of the Gemini model known as Gemini Pro. To use Gemini Ultra, the most powerful version of the model, you need to sign up for the Gemini Advanced subscription, which is part of the new $20-a-month Google One AI Premium plan. (Those names aren’t helpful, Google!) The subscription also comes with 2 TB of Google Drive storage and all the other features. Google One subscription, so Google is labeling it as a $10 monthly increase for those users. For everyone, it’s the same price as ChatGPT Plus and other products – $20/month seems to be the going price for a high-end AI bot.
The Ultra model can contain more context and have longer conversations
For $20 a month, Hsiao says Gemini Ultra “sets the state-of-the-art across a wide range of text, images, audio and video.” The Ultra model can contain more context and hold longer conversations, and is designed to be better at complex tasks like coding and logical reasoning.
It’s no surprise that Google is so all-in on Gemini, but it does increase the company’s ability to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and other strong AI contenders growing in the market. In our tests right after Gemini was released last year, Bard running with Gemini was very good, almost on par with GPT-4, but significantly slower. Now Google must prove it can keep up with the industry as it tries to both build a compelling consumer product and convince developers to build on Gemini rather than OpenAI.
Only a few times in Google’s history has the entire company seemed to bet on one thing. Once it became Google Plus… and we know how that goes. But this time, it seems Google is fully committed to being an AI company. That means Gemini could be as big as Google.