Google IO 2024 is approaching fast, with the big G's festival for Android 15, Wear OS 5, Android TV and more kicking off on May 14. And we now have an official schedule to give us some hints of the software (and maybe hardware) announcements in the pipeline.
The Google IO 2024 schedule (spotted by @MishaalRahman on X, formerly Twitter) naturally doesn't reveal any specifics, but it does confirm where we'll see some big new software upgrades.
The keynote, which will be well worth tuning into, will kick off at 10am PT / 5pm GMT on May 14 (which works out as 3am AEST in Australia). But the details of the follow-up sessions give us a taster of what will be shown off, including our first proper look at Wear OS 5.
That's confirmed in the 'Building for the future of Wear OS' session, which will help developers “discover the new features of Wear OS 5”. Considering the smartwatch platform appeared to be flirting with the Google Graveyard not long ago, that's good news. We'll presumably hear more about a release date at the event, and maybe even a Pixel Watch 3.
What else does the schedule reveal? Android 15 was always a shoo-in for this year's show, so it's no surprise that the OS will be covered alongside “generative AI, form factors” and more at Google IO 2024.
Thirdly, AI will naturally be a huge general theme, with Google Gemini a consistent thread across the event. Developers will discover “new ways to build immersive 3D maps” and how to make “next-gen AI apps with Gemini models”. Gemini will also power new apps for Google Chat and create new content from images and video, thanks to Google's multi-modal Gemini Pro Vision model.
Fans of Android Auto will also be pleased to hear that it'll likely get some upgrades, too, with one developer session titled “Android for Cars: new in-car experiences”. Likewise, Google TV and Android TV OS will get a mention, at the very least, with one session promising to show off “new user experience enhancements in Google TV and the latest additions to the next Android TV OS platform”.
Because Google IO 2024 is a developer conference, its sessions are all themed around software – but we'll almost certainly see lots of new hardware treats announced during the keynote, too.
This week, rumors about a refreshed Pixel Tablet (rather than a Pixel Tablet 2) suggested it could also make its bow at Google's conference. A Google Pixel Fold 2 is also on the cards, though we have also heard whispers of a Pixel 9 Pro Fold instead.
As always, we can expect some surprises too, like when Google teased its live-translation glasses at Google IO 2022, which then sadly disappeared in a cloud of vaporware. Let's hope its new ideas for this year's conference stick around a little longer.
Google's latest AI experiment, Gemini, is about to get a whole lot more useful thanks to support for third-party music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. This new development was apparently found in Gemini’s settings, and users will be able to pick their preferred streaming service to use within Gemini.
Gemini has been running shifts all around different Google products, particularly as a digital assistant sometimes in place of and sometimes in tandem with Google Assistant.
It’s still somewhat limited compared to Assistant and is not at the stage where it can fully replace the Google staple. One of these limitations is that it can’t enlist a streaming service of a user’s choice to play a song or other audio recording like many popular digital assistants (including Google Assistant) can. This might not be the case for long, however.
Screenshots from PiunikaWeb’s tipster show that the Gemini app’s settings now have a new “Music” option, with text reading “Select preferred services used to play music” underneath. This will presumably allow users to choose from whatever streaming services Google deems compatible.
Once you choose a streaming service, Gemini will hopefully work seamlessly with that service and enable you to control it using voice commands. PiunikaWeb suggests that users will be able to use Gemini for song identification, possibly by letting Gemini listen to the song, and then interact with a streaming app to try and find the song that’s playing in their surroundings, similar to the way Shazam works. If that’s the case, that’s one fewer separate app you’ll need.
What we don't know yet, but hope to soon
(Image credit: Shutterstock/Dean Drobot)
This is all very exciting and from the screenshots, it looks like the feature is a good amount into development.
It’s not clear if PiunikaWeb’s tipster could get the feature to actually work or which streaming services will work in sync with Gemini, and we don’t know when Google will roll this feature out.
Still, it’s highly requested and a must if Google has plans for Gemini to take Assistant’s place, so it’ll probably be rolled out in a future Gemini update. It’s also indicative to me that Google seems pretty committed to expanding Gemini’s repertoire so that it joins Google’s other popular products and services.
If you’ve been using Google Chrome for the past few years, you may have noticed that whenever you’ve had to think up a new password, or change your existing one, for a site or app, a little “Suggest strong password” dialog box would pop up – and it looks like it could soon offer AI-powered password suggestions.
A keen-eyed software development observer has spotted that Google might be gearing up to infuse this feature with the capabilities of Gemini, its latest large language model (LLM).
The discovery was made by @Leopeva64 on X. They found references to Gemini in patches of Gerrit, a web-based code review system developed by Google and used in the development of Google products like Android.
These findings appear to be backed up by screenshots that show glimpses of how Gemini could be incorporated into Chrome to give you even better password suggestions when you’re looking to create a new password or change from one you’ve previously set.
Google’s Gemini COULD give you suggestions for stronger passwords in the future, these suggestions would be shown when you create a new password or when you change a saved one, this is mentioned in a couple of patches in Gerrit:https://t.co/5WWhDn4km0.https://t.co/okjc4cjQ93 pic.twitter.com/7WB2GFrV00April 20, 2024
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Gemini guesswork
One line of code that caught my attention is that “deleting all passwords will turn this feature off.” I wonder if this does what it says on the tin: shutting the feature off if a user deletes all of their passwords, or if this just means all of the passwords generated by the “Suggest strong passwords” feature.
The final screenshot that @Leopeva64 provides is also intriguing as it seems to show the prompt that Google engineers have included to get Gemini to generate a suitable password.
This is a really interesting move by Google and it could play out well for Chrome users who use the strong password suggestion feature. I’m a little wary of the potential risks associated with this method of password generation, similar to risks you find with many such methods. LLMs are susceptible to information leaks caused by prompt or injection hacks. These hacks are designed to trick the AI models to give out information that their creators, individuals, or organizations might want to keep private, like someone’s login information.
(Image credit: Shutterstock/Gorodenkoff)
An important security consideration
Now, that sounds scary and as far as we know, this hasn’t happened yet with any widely-deployed LLM, including Gemini. It’s a theoretical fear and there are standard password security practices that tech organizations like Google employ to prevent data breaches.
These include encryption technologies, which encode data so that only authorized parties can access it for multiple stages of the password generation and storage process, and hashing, a one-way data conversion process that’s intended to make data reverse-engineering hard to do.
You could also use any other LLM like ChatGPT to generate a strong password manually, although I feel like Google knows more about how to do this, and I’d only advise experimenting with that if you’re a software data professional.
It’s not a bad idea as a proposition and a use of AI that could actually be very beneficial for users, but Google will have to put an equal (if not greater) amount of effort into making sure Gemini is bolted down and as impenetrable to outside attacks as can be. If it implements this and by some chance it does cause a huge data breach, that will likely damage people’s trust of LLMs and could impact the reputations of the tech companies, including Google, who are championing them.
Gemini is lining up to become an even bigger part of the Android ecosystem as a toggle switch for the AI may soon appear on the official Google app. Evidence of this update was discovered in a recent beta by industry insider AssembleDebug who then shared his findings with news site Pianika Web.
The feature could appear as a toggle switch right above the search bar. Flipping the switch causes the standard Search interface to morph into the Gemini interface where you can enter a prompt, talk to the model, or upload an image. According to Android Authority, turning on the AI launches a window asking permission to make the switch, assuming you haven't already.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because the Google app on iOS has had the same function since early February. Activating the feature on either operating system has Gemini replace Google Assistant as your go-to helper on the internet.
Gemini's new role
You can hop between the two at any time. It’s not a permanent fixture or anything – at least not right now. Google has been making its AI more prominent on smartphones and its first-party platforms. Recently, hints emerged of Gemini possibly gaining a summarization tool as well as reply suggestions on Gmail.
It is possible to have the Gemini toggle switch appear on your Android phone. AssembleDebug published a step-by-step guide on TheSpAndroid, however, the process will take you a long time. First, you’ll need a rooted smartphone running at least Android 12 which is a complicated process in of itself. We have a guide explaining how to root your mobile device if you're interested in checking that out. Then you’ll need the latest Google App beta from the Play Store, the GMS Flags app from GitHub, and Gemini on your device.
Even if you follow all of these instructions, there’s still a chance it may not work, so you’re probably better off waiting for the switch to officially roll out.
No word on when that’ll happen. Although we could see the feature make its official debut during next month’s Google I/O 2024 event. The tech giant is cooking up something big and we can’t wait to see what it is.
Google’s new generative AI model, Gemini, is coming to Android tablets. Gemini AI has been observed running on a Google Pixel Tablet, confirming that Gemini can exist on a device alongside Google Assistant… for the time being, at least. Currently, Google Gemini is available to run on Android phones, and it’s expected that it will eventually replace Google Assistant, Google’s current virtual assistant that’s used for voice commands.
When Gemini is installed on Android phones, users would be prompted to choose between using Gemini and Google Assistant. It’s unknown if this restriction will apply to tablets when Gemini finally arrives for them – though at the moment it appears not.
(Image credit: Shutterstock/GaudiLab)
A discovery in Google Search's code
The news was brought to us via 9to5Google, which did an in-depth report on the latest beta version (15.12) of the Google Search app in the Google Play Store and discovered it contains code referring to using Gemini AI on a “tablet,” and would offer the following features:
The code also shows that the Google app will host Gemini AI on tablets, instead of a standalone app that currently exists for Android phones. Google might be planning on a separate Gemini app for tablets and possibly other devices, especially if its plans to phase out Google Assistant are still in place.
9to5Google also warns that this is still as it’s still a beta version of the Google Search app, Google can still change its mind and not roll out these features.
(Image credit: Shutterstock/brizmaker)
Where does Google Assistant stand?
When 9to5Google activated Gemini on a Pixel Tablet, it found that Google Assistant and Gemini would function simultaneously. Gemini for Android tablets is yet to be finalized, so Google might implement a similar restriction that prevents both Gemini and Google Assistant running at the same time on tablets. When both were installed and activated, and the voice command “Hey Google” was used, Google Assistant was brought up instead of Gemini.
This in turn contradicted screenshots of the setup screen showing that Gemini will take precedence over Google Assistant if users choose to use it.
The two digital assistants don’t have the same features yet and we know that the Pixel Tablet was designed to act as a smart display that uses Google Assistant when docked. Because Google Assistant will be used when someone asks Gemini to do something it’s unable to do, we may see the two assistants running in parallel for the time being, until Gemini has all of Google Assistant's capabilities, such as smart home features.
Meanwhile, Android Authority reports that the Gemini experience on the Pixel Tablet is akin to the Pixel Fold and predicts that Google’s tablets will be the first Android to gain Gemini capabilities. This makes sense, as Google may want to use Gemini exclusivity to encourage more people to buy Pixel tablets in the future. The Android tablet market is a highly competitive one, and advanced AI capabilities may help Pixel tablets stand out.
Google is gearing up to relaunch its image creation tool that’s part of the newly-rebranded generative artificial intelligence (AI) bot, Gemini, in the next few weeks. The generative AI image creation tool is in theory capable of generating almost anything you can dream up and put into words as a prompt, but “almost” is the key word here.
Google has pumped the brakes on Gemini’s image generation after Gemini was observed creating historical depictions and other questionable images that were considered inaccurate or offensive. However, it looks like Gemini could return to image generation soon, as Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis announced that Gemini will be rebooted in the coming week after taking time to address these issues.
Image generation came to Gemini earlier in February, and users were keen to test its abelites. Some people attempted to generate images depicting a certain historical period that appeared to greatly deviate from accepted historical fact. Some of these users took to social media to share their results and direct criticism at Google.
The images caught many people’s attention and sparked many conversations, and Google has recognized the images as a symptom of a problem within Gemini. The tech giant then chose to take the feature offline and fix whatever was causing the model to dream up such strange and controversial pictures.
Hassabis confirmed that Gemini was not working as intended, and that it would take some weeks to amend it, and bring it back online while speaking at a panel taking place at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
If at first, your generative AI bot doesn't succeed…
Google’s first attempt at a generative AI chatbot was Bard, which saw a lukewarm reception and didn’t win users over from the more popular ChatGPT in the way Google had hoped, after which it changed course and debuted its revamped and rebranded family of generative models, Gemini. Like ChatGPT, Google is now offering a premium-tier for Gemini, which offers advanced features for a subscription.
The examples of Gemini's misadventures have also reignited discussions about AI ethics generally, and Google’s AI ethics specifically, and around issues like the accuracy of generated AI output and AI hallucinations. Companies like Microsoft and Google are pushing ahead to win the AI assistant arms race, but while racing ahead, they’re in danger of releasing products with flaws that could undermine their hard work.
AI-generated content is becoming increasingly popular and, especially due to their size and resources, these companies can (and really, should) be held to a high standard of accuracy. High profile fails like the one Gemini experienced aren’t just embarrassing for Google – it could damage the product’s perception in the eyes of consumers. There’s a reason Google rebranded Bard after its much-mocked debut.
There’s no doubt that AI is incredibly exciting, but Google and its peers should be mindful that rushing out half-baked products just to get ahead of the competition could spectacularly backfire.
Google’s Gemini AI has only been around for two months at the time of this writing, and already, the company is launching its next-generation model dubbed Gemini 1.5.
The announcement post gets into the nitty-gritty explaining all the AI’s improvements in detail. It’s all rather technical, but the main takeaway is that Gemini 1.5 will deliver “dramatically enhanced performance.” This was accomplished with the implementation of a “Mixture-of-Experts architecture” (or MoE for short) which sees multiple AI models working together in unison. Implementing this structure made Gemini easier to train as well as faster at learning complicated tasks than before.
There are plans to roll out the upgrade to all three major versions of the AI, but the only one being released today for early testing is Gemini 1.5 Pro.
What’s unique about it is the model has “a context window of up to 1 million tokens”. Tokens, as they relate to generative AI, are the smallest pieces of data LLMs (large language models) use “to process and generate text.” Bigger context windows allow the AI to handle more information at once. And a million tokens is huge, far exceeding what GPT-4 Turbo can do. OpenAI’s engine, for the sake of comparison, has a context window cap of 128,000 tokens.
Gemini Pro in action
With all these numbers being thrown, the question is what does Gemini 1.5 Pro look like in action? Google made several videos showcasing the AI’s abilities. Admittedly, it’s pretty interesting stuff as they reveal how the upgraded model can analyze and summarize large amounts of text according to a prompt.
In one example, they gave Gemini 1.5 Pro the over 400-page transcript of the Apollo 11 moon mission. It showed the AI could “understand, reason about, and identify” certain details in the document. The prompter asks the AI to locate “comedic moments” during the mission. After 30 seconds, Gemini 1.5 Pro managed to find a few jokes that the astronauts cracked while in space, including who told it and explained any references made.
These analysis skills can be used for other modalities. In another demo, the dev team gave the AI a 44-minute Buster Keaton movie. They uploaded a rough sketch of a gushing water tower and then asked for the timestamp of a scene involving a water tower. Sure enough, it found the exact part ten minutes into the film. Keep in mind this was done without any explanation about the drawing itself or any other text besides the question. Gemini 1.5 Pro understood it was a water tower without extra help.
Experimental tech
The model is not available to the general public at the moment. Currently, it’s being offered as an early preview to “developers and enterprise customers” through Google’s AI Studio and Vertex AI platforms for free. The company is warning testers they may experience long latency times since it is still experimental. There are plans, however, to improve speeds down the line.
We reached out to Google asking for information on when people can expect the launch of Gemini 1.5 and Gemini 1.5 Ultra plus the wider release of these next-gen AI models. This story will be updated at a later time. Until then, check out TechRadar's roundup of the best AI content generators for 2024.
Google explained that it’s standard practice for human annotators to read, label, and process conversations that users have with Gemini. This information and data are used to improve Gemini to make it perform better in future conversations with users. It does clarify that conversations are “disconnected” from specific Google accounts before being seen by reviewers, but also that they’re stored for up to three years, with “related data” like user devices and languages as well as location. According to TechCrunch, Google doesn’t make it clear if these are in-house annotators or outsourced from elsewhere.
If you’re feeling some discomfort about relinquishing this sort of data to be able to use Gemini, Google will give users some control over how and which Gemini-related data is retained. You can turn off Gemini App Activity in the My Activity dashboard (which is turned on by default). Turning off this setting will stop Gemini from saving conversations in the long term, starting when you disable this setting.
However, even if you do this, Google will save conversations associated with your account for up to 72 hours. You can also go in and delete individual prompts and conversations in the Gemini Apps Activity screen (although again, it’s unclear if this fully scrubs them from Google's records).
A direct warning that's worth heeding
Google puts the following in bold for this reason – your conversations with Gemini are not just your own:
Please don’t enter confidential information in your conversations or any data you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our products, services, and machine-learning technologies.
Google’s AI policies regarding data collection and retention are in line with its AI competitors like OpenAI. OpenAI’s policy for the standard, free tier of ChatGPT is to save all conversations for 30 days unless a user is subscribed to the enterprise-tier plan and chooses a custom data retention policy.
Google and its competitors are navigating what is one of the most contentious aspects of generative AI – the issues raised and the necessity of user data that comes with the nature of developing and training AI models. So far, it’s been something of a Wild West when it comes to the ethics, morals, and legality of AI.
That said, some governments and regulators have started to take notice, for example, the FTC in the US and the Italian Data Protection Authority. Now’s a good time as ever for tech organizations and generative AI makers to pay attention and be proactive. We know they already do this when it comes to their corporate-orientated, paid customer models as those AI products very explicitly don’t retain data. Right now, tech companies don’t feel they need to do this for free individual users (or to at least give them the option to opt-out), so until they do, they’ll probably continue to scoop up all of the conversational data they can.
Last week, Google rebranded its Bard AI bot as Gemini (matching the name of the model it runs on), and pushed out an Android app in the US; and while the new app has brought a few frustrations with it, Google is now busy trying to fix the major ones.
You can, if you want, use Google Gemini as a replacement for Google Assistant on your Android phone – and Google has made this possible even though Gemini lacks a lot of the basic digital assistant features that users have come to rely on.
One problem has now been fixed: originally, when chatting to Gemini using your voice, you had to manually tap on the 'send' arrow to submit your command or question – when you're trying to keep up a conversation with your phone, that really slows everything down.
As per 9to5Google, that's no longer the case, and Google Gemini will now realize that you've stopped talking (and respond accordingly) in the same way that Google Assistant always has. It makes the app a lot more intuitive to use.
Updates on the way
Ok – Gemini day 2 recap: things people like, things we gotta fix. Keep your feedback coming. We’re reading it all.THINGS PEOPLE LIKE (♥️♥️♥️)- Writing style- Creativity for helping you find the right words/ideas- Speed of responses- Not hitting usage caps- Online…February 10, 2024
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What's more, Google Gemini team member Jack Krawczyk has posted a list of features that engineers are currently working on – including some pretty basic functionality, including the ability to interact with your Google Calendar and reminders.
A coding interpreter is apparently also on the roadmap, which means Gemini would not just be able to produce programming code, but also to emulate how it would run – all within the same app. Additionally, the Google Gemini team is working to remove some of the “preachy guardrails” that the AI bot currently has.
The “top priority” is apparently refusals, which means Gemini declines to complete a task or answer a question. We've seen Reddit posts that suggest the AI bot will sometimes apologetically report that it can't help with a particular prompt – something that's clearly on Google's radar in terms of rolling fixes out.
Krawczyk says the Android app is coming to more countries in the coming days and weeks, and will be available in Europe “ASAP” – and he's also encouraging users to keep the feedback to the Google team coming.
Google has been a sleeping AI giant, but this week it finally woke up. Google Gemini is here and it's the tech giant's most powerful range of AI tools so far. But Gemini is also, in true Google style, really confusing, so we're here to quickly break it all down for you.
Gemini is the new umbrella name for all of Google's AI tools, from chatbots to voice assistants and full-blown coding assistants. It replaces both Google Bard – the previous name for Google's AI chatbot – and Duet AI, the name for Google's Workspace-oriented rival to CoPilot Pro and ChatGPT Plus.
But this is also way more than just a rebrand. As part of the launch, Google has released a new free Google Gemini app for Android (in the US, for now. For the first time, Google is also releasing its most powerful large language model (LLM) so far called Gemini Ultra 1.0. You can play with that now as well, if you sign up for its new Google One AI Premium subscription (more on that below).
This is all pretty head-spinning stuff, and we haven't even scratched the surface of what you can actually do with these AI tools yet. So for a quick fast-charge to get you up to speed on everything Google Gemini, plug into our easily-digestible explainer below…
1. Gemini replaces Google Bard and Duet AI
In some ways, Google Gemini makes things simpler. It's the new umbrella name for all of Google's AI tools, whether you're on a smartphone or desktop, or using the free or paid versions.
Gemini replaces Google Bard (the previous name for Google's “experimental” AI chatbot) and Duet AI, the collection of work-oriented tools for Google Workspace. Looking for a free AI helper to make you images or redraft emails? You can now go to Google Gemini and start using it with a standard Google account.
But if you want the more powerful Gemini Advanced AI tools – and access to Google's newest Gemini Ultra LLM – you'll need to pay a monthly subscription. That comes as part of a Google One AI Premium Plan, which you can read more about below.
To sum up, there are three main ways to access Google Gemini:
As we mentioned above, Google has launched a new free Gemini app for Android. This is rolling out in the US now and Google says it'll be “fully available in the coming weeks”, with more locations to “coming soon”. Google is known for having a broad definition of “soon”, so the UK and EU may need to be patient.
There's going to be a similar rollout for iOS and iPhones, but with a different approach. Rather than a separate standalone app, Gemini will be available in the Google app.
The Android app is a big deal in particular because it'll let you set Gemini as your default voice assistant, replacing the existing Google Assistant. You can set this during the app's setup process, where you can tap “I agree” for Gemini to “handle tasks on your phone”.
Do this and it'll mean that whenever you summon a voice assistant on your Android phone – either by long-pressing your home button or saying “Hey Google” – you'll speak to Gemini rather than Google Assistant. That said, there is evidence that you may not want to do that just yet…
3. You may want to stick with Google Assistant (for now)
(Image credit: Google)
The Google Gemini app has only been out for a matter of days – and there are early signs of teething issues and limitations when it comes to using Gemini as your voice assistant.
The Play Store is filling up with complaints stating that Gemini asks you to tap 'submit' even when using voice commands and that it lacks functionality compared to Assistant, including being unable to handle hands-free reminders, home device control and more. We've also found some bugs during our early tests with the app.
Fortunately, you can switch back to the old Google Assistant. To do that, just go the Gemini app, tap your Profile in the top-right corner, then go to Settings > Digital assistants from Google. In here you'll be able to choose between Gemini and Google Assistant.
Sissie Hsiao (Google's VP and General Manager of Gemini experiences) claims that Gemini is “an important first step in building a true AI assistant – one that is conversational, multimodal and helpful”. But right now, it seems that “first step” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
4. Gemini is a new way to quiz Google's other apps
(Image credit: Google)
Like the now-retired Bard, Gemini is designed to be a kind of creative co-pilot if you need help with “writing, brainstorming, learning, and more”, as Google describes it. So like before, you can ask it to tell you a joke, rewrite an email, help with research and more.
As always, the usual caveats remain. Google is still quite clear that “Gemini will make mistakes” and that, even though it's improving by the day, Gemini “can provide inaccurate information, or it can even make offensive statements”.
This means its other use case is potentially more interesting. Gemini is also a new way to interact with Google's other services like YouTube, Google Maps and Gmail. Ask it to “suggest some popular tourist sites in Seattle” and it'll show them in Google Maps.
Another example is asking it to “find videos of how to quickly get grape juice out of a wool rug”. This means Gemini is effectively a more conversational way to interact with the likes of YouTube and Google Drive. It can also now generate images, which was a skill Bard learnt last week before it was renamed.
5. The free version of Gemini has limitations
(Image credit: Future)
The free version of Gemini (which you access in the Google Gemini app on Android, in the Google app on iOS, or on the Gemini website) has quite a few limitations compared to the subscription-only Gemini Advanced.
This is partly because it's based on a simpler large language model (LLM) called Gemini Pro, rather than Google's new Gemini Ultra 1.0. Broadly speaking, the free version is less creative, less accurate, unable to handle multi-step questions, can't really code and has more limited data-handling powers.
This means the free version is best for basic things like answering simple questions, summarizing emails, making images, and (as we discussed above) quizzing Google's other services using natural language.
Looking for an AI assistant that can help with advanced coding, complex creative projects, and also work directly within Gmail and Google Docs? Google Gemini Advanced could be more up your street, particularly if you already subscribe to Google One…
6. Gemini Advanced is tempting for Google One users
The subscription-only Gemini Advanced costs $ 19.99 / £18.99 / AU$ 32.99 per month, although you can currently get a two-month free trial. Confusingly, you get Advanced by paying for a new Google One AI Premium Plan, which includes 2TB of cloud storage.
This means Gemini Advanced is particularly tempting if you already pay for a Google One cloud storage plan (or are looking to sign up for it anyway). With a 2TB Google One plan already costing $ 9.99 / £7.99 / AU$ 12.49 per month, that means the AI features are effectively setting you back an extra $ 10 / £11 / AU$ 20 a month.
There's even better news for those who already have a Google One subscription with 5TB of storage or more. Google says you can “enjoy AI Premium features until July 21, 2024, at no extra charge”.
This means that Google, in a similar style to Amazon Prime, is combining its subscriptions offerings (cloud storage and its most powerful AI assistant) in order to make them both more appealing (and, most likely, more sticky too).
7. The Gemini app could take a little while to reach the UK and EU
(Image credit: Future)
While Google has stated that the Gemini Android app is “coming soon” to “more countries and languages”, it hasn't given any timescale for when that'll happen – and a possible reason for the delay is that it's waiting for the EU AI Act to become clearer.
Sissie Hsiao (Google's VP and General Manager of Gemini experiences) told the MIT Technology Review “we’re working with local regulators to make sure that we’re abiding by local regime requirements before we can expand.”
While that sounds a bit ominous, Hsiao added that “rest assured, we are absolutely working on it and I hope we’ll be able to announce expansion very, very soon.” So if you're in the UK or EU, you'll need to settle for tinkering with the website version for now.
Given the early reviews of the Google Gemini Android app, and its inconsistencies as a Google Assistant replacement, that might well be for the best anyway.
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