Google releases Gemini, an AI-powered chatbot and voice assistant
First there were talking digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. Then there were online chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard. Now the two are merging.
On Thursday, Google introduced Gemini, a smartphone app that acts as both a talking digital assistant and a conversational chatbot. It responds to voice and text requests, can answer questions, write poetry, generate images, compose emails, analyze personal photos, and take other actions such as setting a timer or placing a phone call.
Gemini is immediately available to English speakers in more than 150 countries and territories, including the United States, and replaces Bard and Google Assistant. It is supported by artificial intelligence technology that the company has been developing since early last year.
The new app is designed to perform a range of tasks, including serving as a personal tutor, helping computer programmers with coding tasks and even preparing job seekers for job interviews, Google said.
“It can help you play roles in different scenarios,” says Sissie Hsiao. a Google vice president in charge of the company's Google Assistant unit, during a briefing with reporters.
When ChatGPT arrived from OpenAI in late 2022 and wowed audiences with the way it answered questions, wrote papers and generated computer code, Google found itself playing catch-up. Like other tech giants, the company had been developing similar technology for years but had yet to release a product as advanced as ChatGPT.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)
Google released its own chatbot, Bard, in March to mediocre reviews. In the weeks that followed, the company merged its two leading AI labs – Google Brain and DeepMind – and announced that the combined lab was developing a new AI technology called Gemini.
Gemini is what researchers call a large language model, or LLM, a mathematical system that can learn skills by analyzing vast amounts of data, including books, computer programs and online chatter. By identifying patterns in all that text, an LLM can learn to generate text itself. That means it can write poetry, generate computer code and even hold a conversation.
It is also prone to errors. It can misrepresent facts or 'hallucinate' – make things up.
Gemini is a 'multimodal' system, meaning it can respond to both image and sound. After analyzing a math problem that included graphs, shapes and other images, it was able to answer the question as a high school student would.
In December, Google used a limited version of this technology to upgrade Bard. Now the company has retired the Bard name and is releasing a more powerful version of the technology through the Gemini app, which is available on Android phones and the web. A version for iPhones will be released “in the coming weeks,” Google said.
Google has created a free but limited version of the Gemini app. A more powerful version – called Gemini Advanced and supported by a version of Google's Ultra language model – is available for a monthly subscription of $19.99. Google offers a two-month free trial.
Google has released benchmark test results claiming that Ultra outperforms OpenAI's latest technology, GPT-4, in several key areas, including computer code generation and news article summarization.
The Gemini app can also generate, analyze and respond to images. For example, users can upload a photo from their Super Bowl party and ask the app to generate a caption.
Google also said it would offer similar technology through its Google Workspace and Google Cloud business services. This allows customers to use the technology alongside apps such as Gmail and Google Docs.
On Android phones, the new app will replace Google Assistant if users download Gemini. Like Google Assistant, it can respond to voice commands, but it also responds to text commands.
Google said it would also continue to offer and improve Google Assistant.
Last year, OpenAI released a similar version of its ChatGPT chatbot that can respond to voice commands. Most industry insiders believe that the AI technology powering chatbots like ChatGPT will merge with and replace digital assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.