SAN FRANCISCO — Google has started rolling out its ‘most capable’ AI model yet, Gemini. As a replacement for Google’s pre-existing Bard chatbot, the new AI assistant has been off to a slow start as it’s already had to have some major updates to its voice commands and app.
Late last year, Google announced its plans to expand and invest in AI technology, and the company has done so with its release of Gemini in early 2024.
As quoted in the Google Blog, Gemini is Google’s most flexible model yet that “was built from the ground up to be multimodal, which means it can generalise and seamlessly understand, operate across and combine different types of information including text, code, audio, image and video.”
US customers can subscribe for $19.99 a month to access Gemini Advanced, which includes a more powerful Ultra 1.0 AI model, the Alphabet subsidiary said.
Subscribers will receive two terabytes of cloud storage that typically cost $9.99 monthly, and they will soon gain access to Gemini in Gmail and Google’s productivity suite.
This bundle, known as the Google One AI Premium plan, represents one of the company’s biggest answers yet to Microsoft and its partner OpenAI.
It also shows growing competition over consumers, who now have several paid AI subscription options.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus a year ago pioneered the market for buying early access to AI models and other features, while Microsoft recently announced a competing subscription for AI in programs such as Word and Excel. Both subscriptions cost $20 a month in the United States.
In an interview, Product Lead Jack Krawczyk said cloud storage, Gmail and other integrations would put Google’s subscription in harmony with how people work
