Google revealed on Thursday that its AI chatbot Google Bard will now be called Gemini.
The tech giant also launched Gemini Advanced, a new AI assistant that gives users access to Ultra 1.0, the largest of its basic models Gemini 1.0.
Google introduced Gemini in December as a model with multimodal capabilities capable of forming and generating text, images, audio and video.
Advanced Gemini
With the name change from Bard to Gemini and the release of Gemini Advanced, Google appears to be moving quickly to stay current with OpenAI and its exclusive cloud partner, Microsoft.
Gemini Advanced can be a personal tutor, perform advanced coding, and help creators go from idea to creation by generating new content, according to Google.
It is now generally available in 150 countries and territories in English.
Gemini Advanced is available as part of the Google One AI Premium plan for $19.99 after a free two-month initial cost.
It is also available as an app on Android and in the Google app on iOS.
Google also plans to expand Gemini to more products by changing its generative AI tool AI Duo to Gemini for Workspace. Consumers on the Google One AI Premium plan will soon be able to use Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet, according to the provider.
Google Cloud customers will also notice a rebranding as Duet AI becomes Gemini in the coming weeks, Google said.
Google’s rebranding of Bard and launch of Gemini Advanced is a move to catch up in the generative AI race against rivals Microsoft and OpenAI.
Last year, Microsoft made aggressive competitive strides by integrating OpenAI’s GPT technology into its applications, primarily in the form of co-pilots.
Meanwhile, Google, with its deep roots in AI and its specialist AI unit DeepMind, has tried to keep pace by deploying Bard and its Generative search experience platform.
A response to Microsoft
Gemini Advanced looks like a direct challenge to Microsoft Copilot, said Paul Baier, CEO of analyst firm GAI Insights. But the offering takes an approach of focusing on user data in Gmail, Docs, or Slides, as opposed to an app-connected co-pilot.
“They are deploying more advanced models for a data-centric co-pilot view, which is very different from Microsoft’s application-centric view,” Baier said.
They deploy more advanced models for a data-centric co-pilot view, very different from Microsoft’s application-centric view.
Paul BaierCEO, GAI Insights
Although Microsoft Copilot’s flagship product is Microsoft 365 Copilot, the vendor started with Copilots for Excel, Word and PowerPoint, which caused some confusion among enterprise customers, he said.
“All Microsoft products started as an on-premises software product and then migrated to the cloud,” Baier continued. Meanwhile, Google started with a cloud-based architecture, which will allow it to have a more integrated experience for generative AI tools, he added.
“Google says, ‘Hey, we have all your data. We’re going to co-pilot all your emails, all your slide presentations, all your Google Docs,'” Baier said. “They will be data-centric and become more powerful over time for individual productivity.”
For businesses that use Google Cloud or Workspace, the addition of Gemini will allow easy access to data from spreadsheets, emails and Word documents, he continued.
Despite the apparent similarities, Microsoft Copilot and Gemini Advanced are different, said Futurum Group analyst Mark Beccue.
“Where Copilot is different, Microsoft integrates it with other things that it does that Google doesn’t necessarily do,” Beccue said. An example is the Windows operating system.
The GenAI competition
Regarding the generative AI competition between Google and Microsoft, Google’s launch of Gemini Advanced shows it’s not far behind, Beccue said. Microsoft just made Copilot 365 generally available a few months ago, despite previewing it months earlier.
“Microsoft has taken a big step forward,” he said.
Additionally, with many generative AI products being launched by vendors in 2023, we can expect cloud giants such as Google, Microsoft, and AWS to start rebranding some of them in the coming months , said Chirag Dekate, analyst at Gartner.
“What inadvertently happened last year was that as tech innovators innovated in the rush to get it to market quickly, they also inadvertently showed the complexity of the tech stack,” he said. he declared. “What you’re seeing now is a simplification of branding.”
Google and multimodality
Google is showcasing its native generative AI strategy with Gemini’s multimodal capabilities, Dekate added.
“Google’s peers will have to figure out how to compete and measure up to mandatory multimodal at a time when many of them don’t have the same engines like DeepMind or Google Search to drive the creation of their own native multimodal stacks,” Dekate said. keep on going.
This will likely lead to a “Frankensteinian” version of multimodality, he added, referring to the classic literary monster that destroys its inventor.
“Building a native multimodal model doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. Google’s competitors will likely overlay unimodal models and create simulated multimodality to try to keep up. This is likely to be costly and limited in performance, he added.
For businesses, the challenge will be using Gemini to build applications that go beyond large language model chatbots, AI-defined generative summaries and text-based applications, he continued.
Google will likely continue to grow and incorporate Gemini in its stack leading up to Google Next, the tech giant’s big user conference in April.
Esther Ajao is a TechTarget editorial writer covering artificial intelligence software and systems.
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