What is Google’s Gemini AI tool formerly Bard? Everything you need to know

When you press the “Google It” button on supported answers, Google will highlight the information verified by Search in green, while any unvalidated answers will be highlighted in orange. You can mouse over the highlighted sentences for more context on what Bard might’ve gotten right or wrong. Google is also adding a way to continue a conversation with Bard based on a shared link, allowing you to build on a question someone has already asked. You also don’t have to turn on the integrations with Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Google will ask you to opt in first, and you can disable it at any time. Google’s Bard AI chatbot is no longer limited to pulling answers from just the web — it can now scan your Gmail, Docs, and Drive to help you find the information you’re looking for.

Lastly, regarding their pricing, Google Bard AI and ChatGPT offer free plans to all users. However, ChatGPT provides ChatGPT Plus, a paid version with faster response time, access to new features, and GPT-4, which costs $20 monthly. We often ask questions, and it takes us time to research and find answers because we need to check each piece of information Google presents on the search engine. Google Bard AI differs from the usual Google search because it is more conversational when answering our questions. Instead of presenting us with links, it’ll present us with a direct response. ZDNET’s recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping.

In other countries where the platform is available, the minimum age is 13 unless otherwise specified by local laws. Also, users younger than 18 can only use the Gemini web app in English.

That new bundle from Google offers significantly more than a subscription to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 a month. The service includes access to the company’s most powerful version of its chatbot and also OpenAI’s new “GPT store,” which offers custom chatbot functions crafted by developers. For the same monthly cost, Google One customers can now get extra Gmail, Drive, and Photo storage in addition to a more powerful chat-ified search experience.

He is passionate about video games and sports, though both cause him to yell at the TV frequently. He proudly sports many tattoos, including an Arsenal tattoo, in honor of the team that causes him to yell at the TV the most. Don’t forget, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Google both own several other companies — including YouTube.

It can also communicate in Japanese and Korean now, instead of just English. One way that Google is definitely integrating Bard into your phone is through Google Assistant. Google announced that Google Assistant is getting Bard at its Made By Google 2023 event.

Since introducing Bard in February, Google has been gradually adding more features, including the ability to generate and debug code, as well as create functions for Google Sheets. Google recently added support for Google Lens in Bard, letting you use the tool to brainstorm caption ideas for a photo or find more information about it. Google says that the new Gemini AI is much improved for tackling complex tasks, “like coding, logical reasoning, following nuanced instructions and collaborating on creative projects”. Initial testing suggests that it is indeed a comparable system to the most advanced AI models out there, with tech writer Ethan Mollick noting that it’s “clearly a GPT-4 class model” in his initial review.

How Does Google Gemini Work?

When OpenAI’s ChatGPT opened a new era in tech, the industry’s former AI champ, Google, responded by reorganizing its labs and launching a profusion of sometimes overlapping AI services. This included the Bard chatbot, workplace helper Duet AI, and a chatbot-style version of search. Jasper Chat is a conversational AI tool that’s focused on generating text.

Google has said that Bard’s recent updates will ensure that it cites sources more frequently and with greater accuracy. These features were announced by Google at I/O 2023 and are expected to roll out in the coming months. They come alongside a wave of big AI upgrades from Google that includes virtual try-on, upgraded Google Lens capabilities and Immersive View — which lets you virtually explore several cities across the globe.

Google has also pledged to integrate Gemini into the Google Ads platform, providing new ways for advertisers to connect with and engage users. The Duet AI assistant is also set to benefit from Gemini in the future. The aim is to simplify the otherwise tedious software development tasks involved in producing modern software. While it isn’t meant for text generation, it serves as a viable alternative to ChatGPT or Gemini for code generation.

In another demo, Gemini appeared to recognize an illustration of a duck, hand puppets, sleight-of-hand tricks and other videos. It’s worth noting, however, that the latter demo was taped and later edited by Google. Instead of responding to actual video prompts, the model was responding to more detailed text and image prompts, and taking a lot longer to do it than was shown in the demonstration.

It’s aimed at companies looking to create brand-relevant content and have conversations with customers. It enables content creators to specify search engine optimization keywords and tone of voice in their prompts. Marketed as a “ChatGPT alternative with superpowers,” Chatsonic is an AI chatbot powered by Google Search with an AI-based text generator, Writesonic, that lets users discuss topics in real time to create text or images. Prior to Google pausing access to the image creation feature, Gemini’s outputs ranged from simple to complex, depending on end-user inputs. A simple step-by-step process was required for a user to enter a prompt, view the image Gemini generated, edit it and save it for later use. On the other hand, we are talking about an algorithm designed to do exactly that”—to sound like a person—says Enzo Pasquale Scilingo, a bioengineer at the Research Center E. Piaggio at the University of Pisa in Italy.

However, I’ve noticed that regenerating the drafts often produces very similar results. You’re better off editing the prompt by clicking the pencil icon or using a new prompt to try to get a better answer from Bard. Both chatbots utilize natural language processing, allowing users to input prompts or queries, and in turn, the chatbots produce responses that resemble a human-like conversation.

Gemini, under its original Bard name, was initially designed around search. It aimed to allow for more natural language queries, rather than keywords, for search. Its AI was trained around natural-sounding conversational queries and responses. Instead of giving a list of answers, it provided context to the responses. Bard was designed to help with follow-up questions — something new to search.

When Bard was first introduced last year it took longer to reach Europe than other parts of the world, reportedly due to privacy concerns from regulators there. The Gemini AI model that launched in December became available in Europe only last week. In a continuation of that pattern, the new Gemini mobile app launching today won’t be available in Europe or the UK for now.

So users may want to avoid consulting Gemini for professional advice on sensitive or high-stakes subjects (like health or finance), and refrain from discussing private or personal information with the AI tool. Gemini is a multimodal model, so it is capable of responding to a range of content types, whether that be text, image, video or audio. Google has announced that it will soon have text-to-image creation built right into Bard, not unlike Bing Chat. Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator is powered by Dall-E, while Bard’s text-to-image generation will come from partnership with Adobe.

Apple seems to have developed a workaround by creating its own AI chatbot, codenamed “Apple GPT.” Plus, there’s building evidence that Google has big plans for Bard’s future. Google has dropped hints in recent weeks that Bard will start invading your text messages or start screening your calls Chat PG on Pixel phones. And Bard extensions allow you to connect outside applications to Google Bard to supercharge your productivity. Bard extensions got a major upgrade in the September Bard update, giving you the ability to integrate Bard with Docs, Drive, Flights, Hotels, YouTube and more.

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Gemini’s latest upgrade to Gemini should have taken care of all of the issues that plagued the chatbot’s initial release. The results are impressive, tackling complex tasks such as hands or faces pretty decently, as you can see in the photo below. It automatically generates two photos, but if you’d like to see four, you can click the “generate more” option. Soon, users will also be able to access Gemini on mobile via the newly unveiled Gemini Android app or the Google app for iOS. Bard was first announced on February 6 in a statement from Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

In August, ChatGPT had nearly 1.5 billion desktop and mobile web visits, more than three times as much as Google’s A.I. Tool and other competitors, according to data from Similarweb, a data analysis firm. Separately, a leaked internal email said that Google Assistant could be ‘supercharged’ by AI to make what is google chatbot Assistant more conversational, but what features will get an AI upgrade are still to be determined. Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Anthropic, an AI startup similar to Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Anthropic debuted the new version of its own AI chatbot — Claude 2 — in July 2022.

Even though the technologies in Google Labs are in preview, they are highly functional. On February 8, Google introduced the new Google One AI Premium Plan, which costs $19.99 per month, the same as OpenAI’s and Microsoft’s premium plans, ChatGPT Plus and Copilot Pro. With the subscription, users get access to Gemini Advanced, which is powered by Ultra 1.0, Google’s most capable AI model. LaMDA was built on Transformer, Google’s neural network architecture that the company invented and open-sourced in 2017. Interestingly, GPT-3, the language model ChatGPT functions on, was also built on Transformer, according to Google. Learn about the top LLMs, including well-known ones and others that are more obscure.

Theoretically, AIs capable of passing the test should be considered formally “intelligent” because they would be indistinguishable from a human being in test situations. If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Gemini will be available at any time on Android devices, while Google’s also rolling out a new iOS app for the system. The new Gemini system is the next step on this front, and it’ll be interesting to see how users react, and whether it can help Google maintain its position as the leading web discovery tool. There are a couple of hoops you need to jump through, and even then it’s not available to everyone, but it’s another example of how AI can make tedious tasks more efficient. Google initially had a waitlist for Google Bard but now the chatbot is instantly available in 180 countries.

A recent data mine of an Android APK showed code for a possible Google Bard homescreen widget. It’s unclear if this would be as part of a standalone Bard app or as part of the Google Search mobile app — or if we will ever even see it. But it is a sign that Google is looking at how to integrate Bard into mobile phones. Google is giving web publishers the option to hide their content from Bard. If publishers do choose to block Bard, that could greatly limit the utility of its connection to the internet when providing answers.

Fake AI-generated images are becoming a serious problem and Google Bard’s AI image-generating capabilities thanks to Adobe Firefly could eventually be a contributing factor. But Google is making it easier to detect these fake images with Fact Check Explorer. This Google feature has been around for a few years, but it just got an upgrade where you can upload images to check if they’re fakes. Some people have started using ChatGPT and Bard to provide AI therapy due to the chatbots’ conversational abilities. Given that these chatbots are liable to get things wrong, we recommend seeking a mental health expert if you are dealing with mental health issues, but chatbots are an interesting supplementary resource. For what it’s worth, Google says you should use this feature whenever you need to verify information.

For example, as is the case with all advanced AI software, training data that excludes certain groups within a given population will lead to skewed outputs. A version of this article originally appeared in Le Scienze and was reproduced with permission. Regardless of what LaMDA actually achieved, the issue of the difficult “measurability” of emulation capabilities expressed by machines also emerges. In the journal Mind in 1950, mathematician Alan Turing proposed a test to determine whether a machine was capable of exhibiting intelligent behavior, a game of imitation of some of the human cognitive functions. It was reformulated and updated several times but continued to be something of an ultimate goal for many developers of intelligent machines.

Google Gemini is a direct competitor to the GPT-3 and GPT-4 models from OpenAI. The following table compares some key features of Google Gemini and OpenAI products. After rebranding Bard to Gemini on Feb. 8, 2024, Google introduced a paid tier in addition to the free web application. However, users can only get https://chat.openai.com/ access to Ultra through the Gemini Advanced option for $20 per month. Users sign up for Gemini Advanced through a Google One AI Premium subscription, which also includes Google Workspace features and 2 terabytes of storage. When Bard became available, Google gave no indication that it would charge for use.

If you don’t want to type your question, you can click the microphone button to ask your questions, and Bard will listen and type what you speak. Bard AI can help enhance efficiency, speed up creative thinking, and overall help you get things done quicker. The actual performance of the chatbot also led to much negative feedback. “This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program,” a Google spokesperson told ZDNET. The best part is that Google is offering users a two-month free trial as part of the new plan.

Then, as part of the initial launch of Gemini on Dec. 6, 2023, Google provided direction on the future of its next-generation LLMs. While Google announced Gemini Ultra, Pro and Nano that day, it did not make Ultra available at the same time as Pro and Nano. Initially, Ultra was only available to select customers, developers, partners and experts; it was fully released in February 2024. For example, users can ask it to write a thesis on the advantages of AI.

Since then, it has grown significantly with two large language model (LLM) upgrades and several updates, and the new name might be a way to leave the past reputation in the past. This version is optimized for a range of tasks in which it performs similarly to Gemini 1.0 Ultra, but with an added experimental feature focused on long-context understanding. According to Google, early tests show Gemini 1.5 Pro outperforming 1.0 Pro on about 87% of Google’s benchmarks established for developing LLMs. Ongoing testing is expected until a full rollout of 1.5 Pro is announced. At its release, Gemini was the most advanced set of LLMs at Google, powering Bard before Bard’s renaming and superseding the company’s Pathways Language Model (Palm 2). As was the case with Palm 2, Gemini was integrated into multiple Google technologies to provide generative AI capabilities.

LaMDA had been developed and announced in 2021, but it was not released to the public out of an abundance of caution. OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 and its subsequent popularity caught Google executives off-guard and sent them into a panic, prompting a sweeping response in the ensuing months. After mobilizing its workforce, the company launched Bard in February 2023, which took center stage during the 2023 Google I/O keynote in May and was upgraded to the Gemini LLM in December. Bard and Duet AI were unified under the Gemini brand in February 2024, coinciding with the launch of an Android app.

However, in late February 2024, Gemini’s image generation feature was halted to undergo retooling after generated images were shown to depict factual inaccuracies. Google intends to improve the feature so that Gemini can remain multimodal in the long run. It can translate text-based inputs into different languages with almost humanlike accuracy. Google plans to expand Gemini’s language understanding capabilities and make it ubiquitous.

How to Access Google Gemini

When a user types a prompt or query into Gemini, the transformer generates a distribution of potential words or phrases that could follow that input text, and then selects the one that is most statistically probable. “It starts by looking at the first word, and uses probability to generate the next word, and so on,” AI expert Mark Hinkle told Built In. Its creator, OpenAI, launched a webpage on Monday that lets you begin a conversation with the chatbot without having to sign up or log in first. As Google warns, though, it’s not recommended to use Bard’s text output as a final product. After being announced, Google Bard remained open to a limited amount of users, based on a queue in a waitlist.

• On May 10, 2023, Google removed the waitlist and made Bard available in more than 180 countries and territories.
• It aimed to allow for more natural language queries, rather than keywords, for search.
• By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
• Gemini can also understand, explain and generate code in some of the most popular programming languages, including Python, Java, C++ and Go.
• Outside of writing and teaching, she often spends time exploring the local mountains and beaches.

That may be inspired by the downright ebullient chatbots launched by some smaller AI upstarts, such as Pi from startup Inflection AI and the various app-specific personae that ChatGPT’s custom GPTs now have. When Google first unveiled the Gemini AI model it was portrayed as a new foundation for its AI offerings, but the company had held back the most powerful version, saying it needed more testing for safety. That version, Gemini Ultra, is now being made available inside a premium version of Google’s chatbot, called Gemini Advanced. Accessing it requires a subscription to a new tier of the Google One cloud backup service called AI Premium. Typically, a $10 subscription to Google One comes with 2 terabytes of extra storage and other benefits; now that same package is available with Gemini Advanced thrown in for $20 per month.

What Are The Limitations of Google Bard AI?

It was previously based on PaLM, and initially the LaMDA family of large language models. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. But the margins were slim, indicating that Gemini Pro (the smaller model size that powers the Gemini chatbot) likely doesn’t come out ahead of GPT-4. Gemini can also process and analyze videos, which allows it to generate descriptions of what is going on in a given clip, as well as answer questions about it. Google published a live demo in which Gemini was able to process a 44-minute silent film and identify specific moments within it.

Specifically, Gemini uses a fine-tuned version of Gemini Pro for English. One concern about Gemini revolves around its potential to present biased or false information to users. Any bias inherent in the training data fed to Gemini could lead to wariness among users.

Specifically, Gemini was built on Transformer — a neural network architecture Google invented in 2017 that is now used by virtually all LLMs, including the ones that power ChatGPT. A much smaller version of the Pro and Ultra models, Gemini Nano is designed to be efficient enough to perform tasks directly on smart devices, instead of having to connect to external servers. Nano currently powers features on the Pixel 8 Pro like Summarize in the Recorder app and Smart Reply in the Gboard virtual keyboard app. Named after Google’s most powerful suite of AI models powering the tool, the rebranded Gemini is now available in over 40 languages with a mobile app for Android and iOS devices, according to a release Thursday. Firefly, as it’s called, is Adobe’s text-to-image generative tool that’s being introduced in a variety of Adobe’s creative applications, starting with Adobe Express. Firefly is trained on the company’s own stock image library to get around the ethical and legal problem of image accreditation.

The model comes in three different sizes and is being incorporated into several Google products, including Gmail, Docs and its search engine. All of your chats with Bard are in a single scroll window, which is deleted if you close the window. You can see (and delete) all the prompts in “Bard activity” in the sidebar, but the actual answers from Bard aren’t accessible.

Google is quick to point out some of Bard’s responses may be inaccurate. Google sees it as a complementary experience to Google Search — which just got its own huge AI upgrade. Still, you’ll see a “Google It” button next to responses when you use Bard that takes you to Search. Launched in December of 2023, Gemini is Google’s largest and most capable model to date, according to the company. It was developed by Google’s AI research labs DeepMind and Google Research, and is the culmination of nearly a decade of work. Here’s everything you need to know about Google’s latest generative AI model.

As such, it’s been working to build more advanced systems that not only facilitate such queries, but also maintain its core business offering, in Search ads. Though it’s also hedging its bets there too, with Gemini Advanced set to be offered as part of a paid subscription package. Malcolm McMillan is a senior writer for Tom’s Guide, covering all the latest in streaming TV shows and movies.

It’s an AI chatbot, and it’s very much meant to be a rival to the ever-popular ChatGPT. The decision can be daunting when looking to add an AI website builder to your design arsenal. Several questions should be considered, including what you should look for, how much you can afford, and deciding on the most important features. Google Bard AI, like any other AI writing software, can help generate advertising copy ideas, product descriptions, and sales copy. Another feature that makes it user-friendly is the “Google It” button, which suggests topics based on your questions, making learning more about your topic easier. You’ll be redirected to a traditional Google search once you click Bard’s suggested topics or questions.

Almost precisely a year after its initial announcement, Bard was renamed Gemini. That includes a new way to double-check Bard’s answers through the chatbot’s “Google It” button. While the button previously let you search for topics related to Bard’s answer on Google, it will now show whether Bard’s answers contain information that Google Search corroborates or contradicts. On Tuesday, Google unveiled a plan to leapfrog ChatGPT by connecting Bard to its most popular consumer services, such as Gmail, Docs and YouTube.

Upon Gemini’s release, Google touted its ability to generate images the same way as other generative AI tools, such as Dall-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. Gemini currently uses Google’s Imagen 2 text-to-image model, which gives the tool image generation capabilities. The propensity of Gemini to generate hallucinations and other fabrications and pass them along to users as truthful is also a cause for concern. This has been one of the biggest risks with ChatGPT responses since its inception, as it is with other advanced AI tools. In addition, since Gemini doesn’t always understand context, its responses might not always be relevant to the prompts and queries users provide. A key challenge for LLMs is the risk of bias and potentially toxic content.

Google Bard AI can also give the latest and most recent news and information. When it started in May, it could answer in English, Korean, and Japanese. However, Google Bard AI can now talk in over 40 additional languages, like Arabic, simple and traditional Chinese, German, Hindi, Spanish, and others. David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies the strategy of big technology platforms, says it makes sense for Google to rebrand Bard, since many users will think of it as an also-ran to ChatGPT. Yoffie adds that charging for access to Gemini Advanced makes sense because of how expensive the technology is to build—as Google CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged in an interview with WIRED.

We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. At launch on Dec. 6, 2023, Gemini was announced to be made up of a series of different model sizes, each designed for a specific set of use cases and deployment environments. The Ultra model is the top end and is designed for highly complex tasks.