Google’s Generative AI Engine Gets a New Name

Google gets a new name for its generative AI engine, app, and paid plan

Google has been busy updating its AI offerings, changing Bard to Gemini, releasing a dedicated Android app, and much more. Google's generative AI engine has a paid tier for the first time, meaning you'll have another digital subscription to consider. In this section, we'll review the Google Gemini Advanced capabilities included with the new Google One AI Premium subscription.

Google One AI Premium: Pricing and Availability

The Google One AI Premium package is available for purchase today and costs US$19.99 / £18.99 / AU$32.99 per month. Unlike some other Google One plans, you cannot pay annually to receive a reduction on the overall price; however, you can cancel at any time.

At the time of writing, Google is giving free two-month trials of Google One AI Premium, so there will be no cost for the first two months. You may join up and compare plans on the Google One website.

Google One AI Premium: Features and Benefits

First and foremost, you receive 2TB of storage to use across your Google services, including Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. If you've reached the maximum of the free storage plan, which is only 15GB, there's another reason to upgrade.

You'll see that a range of alternative Google One plans are available, with storage ranging from 2TB to 30TB, but only the Google One AI Premium plan includes the Gemini Advanced capabilities.

Aside from storage capacity, all Google One plans offer priority support, 10% back in the Google Store, additional Google Photos editing capabilities (including Magic Eraser), a dark web monitoring service that searches for breaches of your personal information, and access to the Google One VPN.

Google claims Gemini Ultra 1.0 as having "state-of-the-art performance" and the ability to handle "highly complex tasks" such as text, pictures, and code. Gemini Advanced allows for longer talks and recognizes context more accurately. If you want to utilize Google's most powerful AI, this is it.

"The largest model Ultra 1.0 is the first to outperform human experts on MMLU (massive multitask language understanding), which uses a combination of 57 subjects — including math, physics, history, law, medicine and ethics to test knowledge and problem-solving abilities," according to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

The specialized Google Gemini app for Android, as well as the Gemini features embedded into the Google app for iOS, are available to all users, regardless of membership status and the same is true for the online interface. However, if you choose the premium plan, you will receive the better Ultra 1.0 model in all of these locations.

Google One AI Premium Early Verdict

On the one hand, Google's free two-month trial of the One AI Premium Plan (which includes Gemini Advanced) seems like a no-brainer for individuals looking to experiment with some of the most powerful AI tools available right now. Of certainly, as long as you are somewhat rigorous in cancelling undesired free trials.

But it's still early days for Gemini Advanced. We have yet to put it to the test or compare it to ChatGPT Plus. Its connection with Google's productivity tools is also "coming soon," so it's unclear when that will occur.