On Friday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai touted that Gemini 1.5 artificial intelligence (AI) model can process massive volumes of data in seconds.
Surprisingly, Picha’s comments came only two months after version 1.0 was announced in December 2023. Gemini 1.0 comes with the Alphabet-owned company’s basic AI Suite, while the 1.5 version comes with the AI Suite Pro.
In a single prompt, the large language model (LLM) can analyze a million data pieces, commonly called tokens. Its processing power is at least five times that of its closest competitor, Claude, Anthropic’s LLM AI.
Google hyped that Gemini 1.5 can examine War and Peace, a Leo Tolstoy novel with 500,000 words, in a minute. Moreover, it can research an hour of video, 11 hours of audio, or 30,000 lines of code in one query.
The tech firm confirmed that Gemini, its largest LLM, was made to compete with OpenAI’s Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT). Pichai emphasized that the AI Suite represents the largest science and engineering efforts the company has undertaken.
Google DeepMind’s Vice President of Product Research Eli Collins added that Gemini is significantly cheaper than their earlier LLMs. Additionally, Collins confirmed three versions of the AI model but did not reveal any details for the final version.
Gemini Represents Google in the GenAI Arms Race
Gemini 1.5 embodies Google’s attempt to catch up with other tech giants in integrating generative AI (GenAI) into their offerings. ChatGPT’s release on November 30, 2022, triggered a GenAI arms race involving the world’s top tech companies.
On Thursday, OpenAI released Sora, the world’s first text-to-video AI model, solidifying its position as the global leader in GenAI. Sora can generate realistic and imaginative 60-second videos from a single line of text.
Meanwhile, Samsung released the AI-powered Galaxy S24 series with live translation and live interpreter features in mid-January. Industry experts praised the smartphone series for breaking the language barrier, allowing calls between individuals speaking different languages.
Analysts acknowledged the LLM’s potential to give Google the edge in insight generation and process automation. However, they need information on the final version, presumably Gemini 2.0, before reassessing Alphabet’s standing in the GenAI arms race.
