Google makes its Gemini chatbot faster and more widely available

In its bid to maintain pace with generative AI rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI, Google is rolling out updates to the no-fee tier of Gemini, its AI-powered chatbot. The updates are focused on making the platform more performant -- and more widely available.

Starting Thursday, Gemini 1.5 Flash -- a lightweight multimodal model Google announced in May -- will be available on the web and mobile in 40 languages and around 230 countries. Google claims that Gemini 1.5 Flash delivers upgrades in quality and latency, with especially noticeable improvements in reasoning and image understanding.

In a boon for Google, it might also be cheaper to run on the back end.

At Gemini 1.5 Flash's unveiling, Google emphasized that the model was a "distilled" and highly efficient version of Gemini 1.5 Pro, built for what the company described as "narrow,” “high-frequency” generative AI workloads. Given the overhead of serving a chatbot platform such as Gemini (see: OpenAI's ChatGPT bills), Google's no doubt eager to jump on cost-reducing opportunities, particularly if those opportunities have the fortunate side effect of boosting performance in other areas.

Beyond the new base model, Google says that it's expanding Gemini's context window to 32,000 tokens, which amounts to roughly 24,000 words (or 48 pages of text).

Context, or context window, refers to the input data (e.g., text) that a model considers before generating output (e.g., additional text). A few of the advantages of models with larger contexts are that they can summarize and reason over longer text snippets and files (at least in theory), and that -- in a chatbot context -- they're less likely to forget topics that were recently discussed.

The ability to upload files to Gemini for analysis previously required Gemini Advanced, the paid edition of Gemini gated behind Google's $20-per-month Google One AI Premium Plan. But Google says that it'll soon enable file uploads from Google Drive and local devices for all Gemini users.

"You’ll be able to do things like upload your economics study guide and ask Gemini to create practice questions," Amar Subramanya, VP of engineering at Google, wrote in a blog post shared with TechCrunch. "Gemini will also soon be able to analyze data files for you, allowing you to uncover insights and visualize them through charts and graphics."

To attempt to combat hallucinations -- instances where a generative AI model like Gemini 1.5 Flash makes things up -- Google is previewing a feature that displays links to related web content beneath certain Gemini-generated answers. English-language Gemini users in select territories will see a "chip" icon at the end of a Gemini-generated paragraph with a link to websites -- or emails, if you've given Gemini permission to access your Gmail inbox -- where you can dive deeper.

The move comes after revelations that Google's generative AI models are prone to hallucinating quite badly -- for example, suggesting nontoxic glue in a pizza recipe and inventing fake book reviews attributed to real people. Google earlier this year released a "double check" feature in Gemini designed to highlight Gemini-originated statements that other online sources corroborate or contradict. But the related content links appear to be an effort to make more transparent which sources of info Gemini might be drawing from.

The question in this reporter's mind is how often and accurately Gemini will surface related links. TBD.

Google's not waiting to flood the channels, though.

After debuting Gemini in Messages for select devices earlier in the year, Google is rolling the feature in the European Economic Area (EEA), U.K. and Switzerland, with the ability to chat in newly added languages such as French, Polish and Spanish. Users can pull up Gemini in Messages by tapping the "Start chat" button and selecting Gemini as a chat partner.

Google's also launching the Gemini mobile app in more countries, and expanding Gemini access to teenagers globally.

The company introduced a teen-focused Gemini experience in June, allowing students to sign up using their school accounts -- though not in all countries. In the coming week, that'll change as Gemini becomes available to teens in every country and region that Gemini is normally available to adults.

Coinciding with the rollout, Google says that it's putting "additional policies and safeguards" in place to protect teens -- without going into detail. A new teen-tailored onboarding process is also in tow, along with an "AI literacy guide" to -- as Google phrases it -- "help teens use AI responsibly."

It's the subject of great debate whether kids are leveraging generative AI tools in the ways they were intended, or abusing them. Google is surely eager to avoid headlines suggesting Gemini is a plagiaristic essay generator or capable of giving teens poorly conceived advice on personal problems, and thus taking what steps it can to prevent the worst from occurring.