Following the arrival of OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini model and Meta’s Llama 3.1 models, Google has debuted its own AI update. On Thursday, Google made the Gemini 1.5 Flash model available to free users. The updated model is a fairly comprehensive upgrade over version 1.0, with faster, smarter responses and the ability to hold longer conversations.
According to Gemini VP of engineering Amar Subramanya, 1.5 Flash features “across-the-board improvements in quality and latency, with especially noticeable improvements in reasoning and image understanding.” Back when Google announced 1.5 Flash in May, the company noted that it “excels at summarization, chat applications, image and video captioning, data extraction from long documents and tables, and more.”
Gemini 1.5 Flash is now available to all Gemini users on both web and mobile, in more than 40 languages and over 230 countries and territories.
In addition to rolling out 1.5 Flash to the public, Google announced some other Gemini updates. Gemini 1.5 Flash has a significantly larger context window, and Google will soon add the ability to upload files via Google Drive or from your device to take full advantage of the upgrade. This feature was previously only available with a paid Gemini Advanced subscription.
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Additionally, Google is working to reduce Gemini hallucinations by displaying links to related content for fact-seeking prompts. Click on the little arrows at the end of Gemini’s responses to see websites that offer more information about the topic of discussion. Gemini can also provide inline links to relevant emails found with the Gmail extension.
Other changes include the rollout of Gemini in Google Messages to the European Economic Area (EEA), UK, and Switzerland, expanding Gemini mobile app availability to more countries, and expanding Gemini access to teenagers in over 40 languages.
