Gemini’s free tier is now powered by 1.5 Flash

At I/O 2024, Gemini Advanced started using 1.5 Pro and Google is now upgrading the free version of Gemini with 1.5 Flash. 

Google announced Gemini 1.5 Flash in May as its “fastest and most versatile multimodal AI model” aimed at use cases that prioritize low latency and cost. Compared to 1.5 Pro, it has a lighter weight, while retaining multimodal reasoning capabilities.

In the Gemini app and gemini.google.com, compared to 1.0 Pro, this means “noticeable improvements in reasoning and image understanding,” as well as “across-the-board improvements in quality and latency.”

The context window has increased 4x to 32,000 tokens, with Gemini Advanced still offering 1 million, for “longer back-and-forth conversations” and “more complex questions.” Meanwhile, Gemini will “soon” add the ability for free users to upload files to Gemini for analysis. This includes directly from your device or via Google Drive. 

That means you’ll be able to do things like upload your economics study guide and ask Gemini to create practice questions. Gemini will also soon be able to analyze data files for you, allowing you to uncover insights and visualize them through charts and graphics.

Gemini 1.5 Flash is available now to all free users on mobile and web in 40 languages and over 230 countries/territories. 

Meanwhile, Gemini responses now show links to related content for “fact-seeking prompts.” Appearing at the end of the paragraph, click on the chip to “see websites where you can dive deeper on a certain topic.” This will also work with the Gmail extension to show inline links to the relevant emails. 

Gemini in Google Messages is now “gradually rolling out” to the European Economic Area (EEA), UK and Switzerland. There’s support for languages like French, Polish and Spanish.

The Gemini app is also coming to: Czechia, Hungary, Israel, Kenya, Romania, Serbia, Suriname, Tanzania, Ukraine, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Eritrea.

Finally, Google is “sharing more about how we design Gemini and intend for it to respond.”

You can now read about our approach to Gemini, plus more details about our policy guidelines to better understand how we’re navigating complex and sensitive topics, including responses to topics related to public interest issues, and political, religious or moral beliefs.