In an effort to keep pace with generative AI rivals such as Anthropic and OpenAI, Google is rolling out updates to the no-fee tier of Gemini, its AI-powered chatbot. The updates are aimed at making the platform more productive — and more widely available.
Starting Thursday, Gemini 1.5 Flash — a lightweight multimodal model announced by Google in May — will be available on the web and mobile devices in 40 languages and about 230 countries. Google claims that Gemini 1.5 Flash delivers improvements in quality and latency, with particularly noticeable improvements in reasoning and image understanding.
In Google’s favor, it may also be cheaper to run on the back end.
In unveiling Gemini 1.5 Flash, Google emphasized that the model is a “distilled” and high-performance version of Gemini 1.5 Pro, built for what the company describes as “narrow,” “high-frequency” AI-generating workloads. Given the overhead of running a chatbot platform like Gemini (see OpenAI’s ChatGPT bills), Google is undoubtedly keen to take advantage of cost-cutting opportunities, especially if those opportunities have the happy side effect of increasing productivity in other areas.
In addition to the new base model, Google says it’s expanding Gemini’s context window to 32,000 tokens, which amounts to roughly 24,000 words (or 48 pages of text).
The context or context window refers to the input data (eg text) that the model considers before generating output (eg additional text). A few of the advantages of models with larger contexts are that they can summarize and reason over longer text fragments and files (at least in theory) and that – in the context of a chatbot – they are less likely to forget topics that have been discussed recently.
The ability to upload files to Gemini for analysis previously required Gemini Advanced, the paid edition of Gemini linked to the $20 per month Google One AI premium plan. But Google says it will soon allow file uploads from Google Drive and local drives for all Gemini users.
“You’ll be able to do things like upload your economics study guide and ask Gemini to create practice questions,” wrote Amar Subramanya, vice president of engineering at Google, in a blog post shared with TechCrunch. “Gemini will also soon be able to analyze data files for you, allowing you to uncover insights and visualize them through charts and graphs.”
To try to combat hallucinations — instances where a generative AI model like Gemini 1.5 Flash is doing things — Google is previewing a feature that displays links to related web content below certain answers generated by Gemini. English-speaking Gemini users in select territories will see a “chip” icon at the end of a Gemini-generated paragraph linking to websites — or emails, if you’ve given Gemini permission to access your Gmail inbox — where you can dive deeper .
The move comes after revelations that Google’s generative AI models are prone to hallucinating pretty badly – for example, guessing non-toxic glue in a pizza recipe and making up fake book reviews attributed to real people. Earlier this year, Google launched a “double check” feature in Gemini designed to highlight claims originating in Gemini that other online sources confirm or contradict. But the links to related content appear to be an attempt to make it more transparent which sources of information Gemini may be drawing from.
The question on this reporter’s mind is how often and exactly Gemini will show connected relationships. TBD.
However, Google is not waiting to flood the channels.
After debuting Gemini in Messages for select devices earlier in the year, Google is rolling out the feature in the European Economic Area (EEA), the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, with the ability to chat in newly added languages like French, Polish, and Spanish. Users can download Gemini in Messages by tapping the “Start Chat” button and selecting Gemini as a chat partner.
Google is also rolling out the Gemini mobile app in more countries and expanding access to Gemini for teens globally.
The company introduced a teen-focused Gemini experience in June, allowing students to sign up using their school accounts — though not in all countries. In the coming week, that will change as Gemini will become available to teens in every country and region where Gemini is normally available to adults.
Coinciding with the launch, Google says it’s putting in place “additional policies and safeguards” to protect teens — without going into detail. A new teen-friendly onboarding process is also underway, along with an “AI Literacy Guide” to — as Google puts it — “help teens use AI responsibly.”
Whether children are using generative AI tools as intended or abusing them is a matter of great debate. Google is certainly eager to avoid headlines suggesting that Gemini is a plagiarized essay generator or capable of giving teenagers ill-conceived advice about personal problems, and is thus taking whatever steps it can to prevent the worst from happening .
