On Wednesday, Google launched its highly anticipated flagship AI model, the Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental, alongside a series of other AI model releases. In addition, the company is integrating its “reasoning” model, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, into the Gemini application.
These AI model releases come as the tech industry closely watches the emergence of more affordable AI reasoning models from the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. DeepSeek’s models rival or surpass the capabilities of leading AI models from American tech giants, while also being accessible through the company’s API at a comparatively lower cost.
Both Google and DeepSeek launched AI reasoning models in December, but DeepSeek’s R1 garnered greater attention. Google may now be aiming to increase the visibility of its Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking model by incorporating it into the widely used Gemini app.
According to Google, Gemini 2.0 Pro, the successor to the Gemini 1.5 Pro model launched last February, now stands as the premier model within the Gemini AI model lineup.
The release of the Gemini 2.0 Pro model was inadvertently revealed in the Gemini app’s changelog about a week prior. However, the official release occurred on Wednesday, with an experimental version made available on Google’s AI development platforms, Vertex AI and Google AI Studio. Furthermore, Gemini Advanced subscribers can also access Gemini 2.0 Pro through the Gemini app.
Google states that the new Gemini Pro model excels in coding and managing intricate prompts. It also possesses “better understanding and reasoning of world knowledge” compared to any of the company’s previous models. Gemini 2.0 Pro is capable of utilising tools like Google Search and executing code on behalf of users.
The context window for Gemini 2.0 Pro is 2 million tokens, enabling it to process approximately 1.5 million words in a single instance.
On Wednesday, Google also made its Gemini 2.0 Flash model generally available. First announced in December, this model is now accessible to all users of the Gemini app.
Finally, Google introduced a new, more cost-effective AI model, Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite, possibly in response to the excitement surrounding DeepSeek’s models. According to the company, this model outperforms its Gemini 1.5 Flash model while maintaining the same price and speed.