Google has unveiled its latest artificial intelligence (AI) rival to ChatGPT – but it isn’t available in the UK or Europe.
Named Gemini, it will be able to understand text, image, video and sound prompts. In one demo, it was shown a photo of a student’s maths homework and helped to correct mistakes.
Google said it promises to be its ‘most capable’ model yet as the group steps up its competition with ChatGPT owner OpenAI.
However, UK and European users will have to wait for the latest update due as Google awaits clearance from regulators.
Bard UK itself does not seem to realise it has been left behind – when asked if it was running on Gemini, it said Gemini was still under development.
The new upgrade is touted to outperform ChatGPT on many fronts, and is also designed to be a ‘one-stop shop’ for all AI needs – compared to OpenAI’s model of running separate products for text prompts, images and audio.
Google and Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai said it will be the biggest upgrade to Bard since it was – somewhat hastily – launched in March as ChatGPT swept the globe.
‘We’re taking the next step on our journey with Gemini, our most capable and general model yet, with state-of-the-art performance across many leading benchmarks,’ said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
‘This new era of models represents one of the biggest science and engineering efforts we’ve undertaken as a company.’
It comes as rapid advances in AI pick up pace, following ChatGPT’s latest release in March, with Google following suit amid a wave of next generation generative AI models, which experts predict will be significantly more advanced.
Google claims Gemini is the first AI model to beat ‘human experts’ in its range of intelligence tests.
It plans to launch in English first, but will expand to different languages and other countries ‘in the near future’.
The group did not say when it will be available in the UK, but confirmed it is in the process of granting the UK AI safety institute – unveiled at the recent AI Summit – with access to its ‘most capable models for research and safety purposes’.
Google said Gemini will be ‘multi-modal’, meaning it will be able to operate and combine different types of information across words, pictures, video and sound.
‘Gemini is also our most flexible model yet – able to efficiently run on everything from data centres to mobile devices,’ it said.
Bard will use Gemini Pro – one of three levels of the model – to allow ‘more advanced reasoning, planning, understanding and more’.
Pro is the middle tier, above Gemini Nano but below Gemini Ultra.
Gemini will also be built into its Pixel 8 Pro smartphones, powering new features such as ‘summarise’ in its recorder app, as well as ‘smart reply’ in Google keyboard, starting with WhatsApp messaging.
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