【Dear Utol (2025): Binyag Episode 43】

Say goodbye to Google Bard,Dear Utol (2025): Binyag Episode 43 and say hello to Google Gemini.

On Thursday, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the company will be rebranding its AI model Bard as Gemini. The company launched Gemini late last year, calling it its "largest and most capable AI model," and Bard and Gemini existed side-by-side for a while. But now, the entirety of Google's public-facing AI universe is being rolled into different variants of Gemini.

"In December, we took a significant step on our journey to make AI more helpful for everyone with the start of the Gemini era, setting a new state of the art across a wide range of text, image, audio, and video benchmarks. However, Gemini is evolving to be more than just the models. It supports an entire ecosystem — from the products that billions of people use every day, to the APIs and platforms helping developers and businesses innovate," Pichai wrote in a blog post.

Moreover, Google is also folding Duet AI features in its Workspace under the Gemini umbrella of products, with Duet AI now becoming Gemini for Workspace. Finally, Duet AI for Cloud will also become Gemini "in the coming weeks."

Google says that Gemini is now available in 40 languages on the web. There's also a new Gemini app on Android, as well as the Google app on iOS. All of these are free, giving you access to the basic version of Gemini, which is called just that and is based on the Pro 1.0 AI model.

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For those who require more from their AI assistant, there is Gemini Advanced, based on Google's largest AI model, Ultra 1.0 (yes, even when consolidating things under one brand, Google still finds a way to make it complicated). Google says that Gemini Advanced is "far more capable at reasoning, following instructions, coding, and creative collaboration." To use Gemini Advanced, you'll have to subscribe to the new Google One AI Premium Plan.

That plan costs $20 per month in the U.S. or €22.99 per month in the EU, though for the price you do get 2TB of storage and other Google One Premium perks.

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