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Google The first version of the Gemini 2.0 series of artificial intelligence models was released on Wednesday.
Called Gemini 2.0 Flash, a chat version of the model is available to users around the world, while an experimental multimodal version of the model (featuring text-to-speech and image generation capabilities) is available to developers.
“If Gemini 1.0 was about organizing and understanding information, Gemini 2.0 is about making information more useful,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement.
Google’s latest large-scale language model outperforms its predecessors in most areas of user requests, such as code generation and the ability to provide factually correct responses to user requests. One area where it falls short of the Gemini 1.5 Pro is when evaluating longer contexts.
To access a chat-optimized version of the experimental Flash 2.0, Gemini users can select it from the model drop-down menu on desktop and mobile web. The company says it will be available on the Gemini mobile app soon.
The multi-modal version of Gemini Flash 2.0 will be available through Google’s AI Studio and Vertex AI developer platforms.
Google said on Wednesday that the multi-mode version of Gemini 2.0 Flash will be generally available in January, and more Gemini 2.0 model sizes will also be launched. The company said it also plans to expand Gemini 2.0 to more Google products in early 2025.
Gemini 2.0 represents Google’s latest effort in the tech industry’s increasingly competitive artificial intelligence race. Google is competing with rivals including tech giants Microsoft and Yuan There are also startups like OpenAI (maker of ChatGPT), Perplexity and Anthropic (maker of Claude).
Along with the release of the new Flash model, there are other research prototypes aimed at developing more “agent” AI models and experiences. The company says the agent model “can learn more about the world around you, think multiple steps ahead, and take action on your behalf with your supervision.”
Last week, Pichai challenged Microsoft’s AI advances in a conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, saying he “would love to do one side by side comparison” The two companies’ model is “any day, any time.”
