Tech giant Google has announced that its Gemini AI chatbot will be getting a major upgrade with support for Gemini 1.5 Flash, a tricky but massive language model developed to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini. Google will make Gemini 1.5 Flash available to all its users, regardless of their subscription level. The company says that with this major update, users will be able to enjoy “general” improvements in terms of the quality of Gemini AI’s responses and the rate at which it delivers those responses.
Users will also see improvements in their reasoning and image understanding abilities. The tech company first introduced Gemini 1.5 Flash at its Google I/O 2024 event in May and made it available to a few subscribed users right after launch. However, the company is now integrating it into the free version of the Gemini mobile app and the web interface available for free at gemini.google.com.
Gemini 1.5 Flash’s enhanced capabilities come from a significant increase in its token size. It currently supports 32,000 tokens, which is four times more than the previous variant of the AI model launched in May. The high token count in Gemini 1.5 Flash shows that it can handle longer, more complex prompts and deliver improved responses. This means users can engage in lengthy back-and-forth interactions and ask Gemini trickier, more complex questions for free.
Company officials said that users will soon have the ability to upload files to the free version of its Gemini AI chatbot, which was previously only available in the paid version. Uploading files to the Gemini AI chatbot supports contextual prompts. Another upcoming feature will help Gemini evaluate data files and develop visualizations and charts inspired by the data files.
Officials say Google is working to reduce AI hallucinations, a term used to define insane or wrong answers. Gemini will provide citations for all its answers to reduce this problem, by linking to all the source material used. Therefore, if Gemini provides a questionable answer, users will have the option to explore the source material and find out for themselves the validity of its claims. Users using Gmail extensions will also have access to these citations, allowing them to ask Gemini questions related to their inboxes. Google also announced that it will allow teens aged 13 and above to use Gemini as a search tool if they have a Gmail email ID.
