Google Gemini upgrades AI powers in Bard, Pixel, and more

It's been a catch up year for Google in the AI space after getting caught a little flat footed by ChatGPT in late 2022. But as we close out the year, the launch of Gemini shows they're ready for the fight back in 2024.

You can dive into all the big details at the Gemini page on Deep Mind, and there's been some complaints about how overly polished Google has made the demo reels. But strip that away and we do see a tool that is a big jump forward from where Bard was in October.

I've used ChatGPT for experimentation all year and it's great to see Google starting to take us somewhere that offers increasingly valid competition. There's still a way to go in terms of experience and the 'feel' of getting what you wanted, but the gap has well and truly closed.

Its biggest trick? A true 'multimodal' model that doesn't separate the tasks of text, image, audio, video and code. It's a new approach and, again, while we're not perfectly wowed on day one, this could be a big new angle for rapid progress into more seamless task requests that have inherent multimodal complexity.

It's still the earliest stages of the new generative AI era of computing. The next two years will see significant changes in how we engage with these new tools and the way they enhance life and business. But it's true OpenAI and Microsoft got a big headstart – now it's up to Google to flex its data muscle and see what it can deliver.