On the evening of February 8th Beijing time, Google announced the official renaming of its AI chatbot Bard to Gemini and the launch of corresponding Android mobile applications. At the same time, the AI features of applications such as Google Mail and Documents in Google Workspace have been renamed Gemini instead of Duet AI, thus opening up Google's own AI big model, the Gemini Universe.
Last March, in response to the aggressive ChatGPT, Google launched the chatbot Bard. But Bard's subsequent series of performances were not impressive, and Microsoft and ChatGPT still have the same momentum in the field of AI big models. In December 2023, Google released the Gemini big model, which is known as Google's most powerful multimodal language model currently, including Ultra, Pro, and Nano specifications, with Ultra having the strongest capabilities, followed by Pro and Nano.
This update has expanded the application scenarios of Gemini. The original Gemini was only integrated into Bard in the Pro version to enhance Bard's planning, understanding, and reasoning abilities. After this update, according to the content presented at the press conference, Gemini will be integrated into various programs in Google Workspace and Google Cloud. Users can also use Gemini as an assistant when editing documents, slides, tables, etc., to improve work efficiency.
In addition, Google has also launched the Gemini app for Android mobile devices, which can be used by users of Apple's iOS system through the Google app. Currently, Android users can set Gemini as the default voice assistant on mobile devices, replacing the previous Google Assistant. In this way, these users can achieve a two in one experience of "voice assistant+AI robot dialogue", just shout "Hey Google", Gemini will be awakened, and perform tasks such as setting alarms or summarizing the news they are browsing. Sissie Hsiao, Vice President of Google, Google Assistant, and Head of Gemini, told some media that this is an important step in creating a "true artificial intelligence assistant.".
The series of actions taken by Google this time are seen by the outside world as a "sharp confrontation" between Google and ChatGPT, one of the reasons being that Gemini's charging plan is "astonishingly similar" to ChatGPT. At present, if you want to use the highest version and most powerful Gemini Ultra 1.0, users need to register for Gemini Advanced and pay $19.99 per month. The ChatGPT PLUS under OpenAI costs $20 per month, but Google also offers a 2-month free usage period after subscription, 2TB of Google Drive storage space, and all other features of Google One subscription.
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Currently, Gemini Advanced has provided English versions in over 150 countries and regions, and will enter the Asia Pacific region in the next week, supporting multiple languages including English, Japanese, and Korean. Although Google claims that Gemini Ultra leads ChatGPT-4 in multiple benchmark tests and has surpassed human experts in MMLU (Massive Multi Task Language Understanding), it remains to be seen how Google's big model, the Gemini Universe, will develop and whether it can rival ChatGPT.
