Google Gemini: Everything You Need to Know About the New Generative AI Platform

Google is making waves with Gemini, its flagship suite of generative AI models, apps, and services. But what exactly is Gemini, and how can you use it?

To make it easier to keep up with the latest Gemini developments, we've put together this handy guide, which we'll keep updated as new Gemini models, features, and news about Google's plans for Gemini are released.

What is Gemini?

Gemini is Google's next-gen generative AI model family, developed by Google's AI research labs DeepMind and Google Research. It comes in four flavors:

Gemini Ultra, the most performant Gemini model. Gemini Pro, a lightweight alternative to Ultra. Gemini Flash, a speedier, "distilled" version of Pro. Gemini Nano, two small models — Nano-1 and the more capable Nano-2 — meant to run offline on mobile devices.

All Gemini models were trained to be natively multimodal — in other words, able to work with and analyze more than just text. Google says that they were pre-trained and fine-tuned on a variety of public, proprietary, and licensed audio, images, and videos, a large set of codebases, and text in different languages.

This sets Gemini apart from models such as Google's own LaMDA, which was trained exclusively on text data. LaMDA can't understand or generate anything beyond text (e.g., essays, email drafts), but that isn't necessarily the case with Gemini models.

We'll note here that the ethics and legality of training models on public data, in some cases without the data owners' knowledge or consent, are murky indeed. Proceed with caution, particularly if you're intending on using Gemini commercially.

What's the difference between the Gemini apps and Gemini models?

Google didn't make it clear from the outset that Gemini is separate and distinct from the Gemini apps on the web and mobile (formerly Bard).

The Gemini apps are clients that connect to various Gemini models — Gemini Ultra (with Gemini Advanced, see below) and Gemini Pro so far — and layer chatbot-like interfaces on top. Think of them as front ends for Google's generative AI, analogous to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude family of apps.

Gemini on the web lives here. On Android, the Gemini app replaces the existing Google Assistant app. And on iOS, the Google and Google Search apps serve as that platform's Gemini clients.

Gemini apps can accept images as well as voice commands and text — including files like PDFs and soon videos, either uploaded or imported from Google Drive — and generate images. As you'd expect, conversations with Gemini apps on mobile carry over to Gemini on the web and vice versa if you're signed in to the same account in both places.

Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Chrome, dev tools, and more

The Gemini apps aren't the only means of recruiting Gemini models' assistance with tasks. Slowly but surely, Gemini-imbued features are making their way into staple apps and services like Gmail and Google Docs.

To take advantage of most of these, you'll need a premium plan. Technically a part of a larger subscription, the premium plan costs $20 and provides access to Gemini in Google Workspace apps like Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Meet. It also enables what Google calls Gemini Advanced, which brings Gemini Ultra to the Gemini apps plus support for analyzing and answering questions about uploaded files.

Gemini Advanced users get extras here and there, also, like trip planning in Google Search, which creates custom travel itineraries from prompts. Taking into account things like flight times (from emails in a user's inbox), meal preferences, and information about local attractions (from Google Search and Maps data), as well as the distances between those attractions, Gemini will generate an itinerary that updates automatically to reflect any changes.

In Gmail, Gemini lives in a side panel that can write emails and summarize message threads. You'll find the same panel in Docs, where it helps you write and refine your content and brainstorm new ideas. Gemini in Slides generates slides and custom images. And Gemini in Google Sheets tracks and organizes data, creating tables and formulas.

Gemini's reach extends to Drive, as well, where it can summarize files and give quick facts about a project. In Meet, meanwhile, Gemini translates captions into additional languages.

Gemini recently came to Google's Chrome browser in the form of an AI writing tool. You can use it to write something completely new or rewrite existing text; Google says it'll take into account the webpage you're on to make recommendations.

AndroGuider Team

Articles written by the AndroGuider team. We try to make them thorough and informational while being easy to read.