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  • Google Rebrands Its AI Chatbot as Gemini to Take On ChatGPT

    Google Rebrands Its AI Chatbot as Gemini to Take On ChatGPT

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    When OpenAI’s ChatGPT opened a new era in tech, the industry’s former AI champ, Google, responded by reorganizing its labs and launching a profusion of sometimes overlapping AI services. This included the Bard chatbot, workplace helper Duet AI, and a chatbot-style version of search.

    Now Google is consolidating many of its generative AI products under the banner of its latest AI model Gemini—and taking direct aim at OpenAI’s subscription service ChatGPT Plus.

    Google announced today that Bard, its experimental chatbot hurriedly launched last March, is now called Gemini—taking the same name of the text, voice, and image capable AI model that started powering the Bard chatbot back in December. Gemini is also getting more prominent positioning among Google’s services. It will have its own app on Android phones, and on Apple mobile devices Gemini will be baked into the primary Google app.

    When Google first unveiled the Gemini AI model it was portrayed as a new foundation for its AI offerings, but the company had held back the most powerful version, saying it needed more testing for safety. That version, Gemini Ultra, is now being made available inside a premium version of Google’s chatbot, called Gemini Advanced. Accessing it requires a subscription to a new tier of the Google One cloud backup service called AI Premium. Typically, a $10 subscription to Google One comes with 2 terabytes of extra storage and other benefits; now that same package is available with Gemini Advanced thrown in for $20 per month.

    That new bundle from Google offers significantly more than a subscription to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 a month. The service includes access to the company’s most powerful version of its chatbot and also OpenAI’s new “GPT store”, which offers custom chatbot functions crafted by developers. For the same monthly cost, Google One customers can now get extra Gmail, Drive and Photo storage in addition to a more powerful chat-ified search experience.

    Personality Upgrade

    Sissie Hsiao, a VP at Google and general manager for Google Assistant and Bard, said in a media briefing ahead of today’s launch that Google conducted blind tests with users of Gemini and other leading chatbots and found the Google offering to be “the most preferred chatbot.”

    Hsiao said Google also gave a hundred leading AI experts access to the advanced version of Gemini and asked them to challenge the bot with complex requests. “They’ve been really excited and giving us really positive feedback.”

    Google says the new Gemini will now have more attitude—a departure from the more neutral tone that it previously adopted—and will “understand intent and react with personality,” according to Jack Krawczyk, a Google director of product management. That may be inspired by the downright ebullient chatbots launched by some smaller AI upstarts, such as Pi from startup Inflection AI, and the various app-specific personas that ChatGPT’s custom GPTs now have.

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  • Google Prepares for a Future Where Search Isn’t King

    Google Prepares for a Future Where Search Isn’t King

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    Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai still loves the web. He wakes up every morning and reads Techmeme, a news aggregator resplendent with links, accessible only via the web. The web is dynamic and resilient, he says, and can still—with help from a search engine—provide whatever information a person is looking for.

    Yet the web and its critical search layer are changing. We can all see it happening: Social media apps, short-form video, and generative AI are challenging our outdated ideals of what it means to find information online. Quality information online. Pichai sees it, too. But he has more power than most to steer it.

    The way Pichai is rolling out Gemini, Google’s most powerful AI model yet, suggests that much as he likes the good ol’ web, he’s much more interested in a futuristic version of it. He has to be: The chatbots are coming for him.

    Today Google announced that the chatbot it launched to counter OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bard, is getting a new name: Gemini, like the AI model it’s based on that was first unveiled in December. The Gemini chatbot is also going mobile, and inching away from its “experimental” phase and closer to general availability. It will have its own app on Android and prime placement in the Google search app on iOS. And the most advanced version of Gemini will also be offered as part of a $20 per month Google One subscription package.

    In releasing the most powerful version of Gemini with a paywall, Google is taking direct aim at the fast-ascendant ChatGPT and the subscription service ChatGPT Plus. Pichai is also experimenting with a new vision for what Google offers—not replacing search, not yet, but building an alternative to see what sticks.

    “This is how we’ve always approached search, in the sense that as search evolved, as mobile came in and user interactions changed, we adapted to it,” Pichai says, speaking with WIRED ahead of the Gemini launch. “In some cases we’re leading users, as we are with multimodal AI. But I want to be flexible about the future, because otherwise we’ll get it wrong.”

    Sensory Overload

    “Multimodal” is one of Pichai’s favorite things about the Gemini AI model—one of the elements that Google claims sets it apart from the guts of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistants, which are also powered by OpenAI technology. It means that Gemini was trained with data in multiple formats—not just text, but also imagery, audio, and code. As a result, the finished modal is fluent in all those modes, too, and can be prompted to respond using text or voice or by snapping and sharing a photo.

    “That’s how the human mind works, where you’re constantly seeking things and have a real desire to connect to the world you see,” Pichai enthuses, saying that he has long sought to add that capability to Google’s technology. “That’s why in Google Search we added multi-search, that’s why we did Google Lens [for visual search]. So with Gemini, which is natively multimodal, you can put images into it and then start asking it questions. That glimpse into the future is where it really shines.”

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  • Gemini Advanced Is a Central Part of Google’s Subscription Future

    Gemini Advanced Is a Central Part of Google’s Subscription Future

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    Google got to where it is mostly by offering free services stuffed with ads, but it has increasingly experimented with a different business model: selling subscriptions for extra perks. Its first subscription offering, debuted in 2006, provided additional photo storage for users who didn’t want to have to hit the delete button. You can now pay Google for extra space for emails and documents, too, or to keep recordings from Nest security cameras and remove ads from YouTube. Today the company added a major new pitch to its subscription slate—it’s asking people to pay extra to access a smarter AI chatbot and more capable productivity helpers.

    Gemini Advanced, Google’s most powerful chatbot yet, launched today behind a paywall. It costs $19.99 a month in a new tier of the Google One subscription plan known as AI Premium. It combines access to the new chatbot with existing Google One offerings like 2 terabytes of extra storage, a VPN, and other perks.

    AI Premium is similar in price to OpenAI’s $20 a month ChatGPT Plus, but includes Google One benefits that otherwise cost $9.99 a month. Subscribers already on pricier Google One tiers will get the new Gemini Advanced features through July 31 at no extra cost; it’s unclear what happens after then.

    Google has said Gemini is at the heart of its plans for an AI-enhanced future. If AI Premium finds an audience, that future could also include Google drawing a significant new revenue stream from subscriptions, as people pay to access more powerful AI tools much as gamers shell out for more powerful hardware.

    Convincing consumers to cough up for AI could also be imperative for Google. Though hard drive costs generally keep falling, prices for powerful chips such as the Nvidia GPUs and Google TPUs needed for cutting-edge generative AI projects are shockingly high as demand outpaces supply.

    Shimrit Ben-Yair, vice president and general manager for the Google One business, tells WIRED that defraying the costs of the computing power behind Gemini is “definitely part of the thinking” in requiring a subscription to access the most advanced version. And it won’t be the last time Google launches an AI feature behind a paywall. “It’s just the first step in many more of these generative AI features coming to the market through Google One,” she says.

    Google announced last week that Google One was about to cross 100 million subscribers. Ben-Yair says that AI Premium is central to how Google expects to land its next 100 million.

    New Model

    The generative AI chip crunch also explains why AI Premium comes with a significant restriction despite being an expansion of Google One: While established Google One benefits such as storage can be split among six Google accounts without additional fees, only the plan manager will have access to Gemini Advanced. “We want to build a really sustainable long-term business here,” Shimrit Ben-Yair says.

    In an interview with WIRED about Google’s AI strategy in the Gemini era, CEO Sundar Pichai says the company projected costs and potential efficiencies 25 years out when determining pricing for the AI Premium plan. The aim was to keep fees, in the company’s view, compelling, while also providing cash to support new development. “We’re building it in a way so that over time it’s what will allow us to invest more in the models and create that virtuous cycle,” Pichai says.

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  • Confessions of an AI Clickbait Kingpin

    Confessions of an AI Clickbait Kingpin

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    “I’m not a fan of AI,” Nebojša Vujinović Vujo says. The admission surprises me: He has built a bustling business by snapping up abandoned news outlets and other websites and stuffing them full of algorithmically generated articles. Although he accepts that his model rankles writers and readers alike, he says he’s simply embracing an unstoppable new tool—large language models—in the same way people rationally swapped horse-drawn buggies for gas-powered vehicles. “I hate cars. They’re making my planet bad,” he says. “But I’m not riding a horse anymore, right? I’m driving a car.”

    I connected with Vujo after digging into the strange afterlife of indie women’s blog The Hairpin, which shut down in 2018. Last month, its website reawakened. In place of the voicey, funny blog posts it was known for, the site began churning out AI-generated, search-engine-optimized pablum about dream interpretations and painfully generic relationship advice like “effective communication is vital.”

    When I emailed an address listed on the zombie site’s About Us page, Vujo responded, claiming that it was just one of more than 2,000 sites he operates, in an AI-content-fueled fiefdom built by acquiring once-popular domains fallen on hard times. He’s the CEO of the digital marketing firm Shantel, which monetizes its AI-populated sites through programmatic ads, sponsored content, and selling the placement of “backlinks” to website owners trying to boost their credibility with search engines. He often targets distressed media sites because they have built-in audiences and a history of ranking highly in search results.

    The foundation of that business is a long-established practice known as domain squatting—buying up web domains that once belonged to established brands and profiting off their reputations with Google and other search engines. Lily Ray, senior director of SEO at the marketing agency Amsive, calls it “the underbelly of the SEO industry.” But Vujo is part of a wave of entrepreneurs giving this old trade a new twist by using generative AI.

    It’s dusk where I live in Chicago when I talk via Zoom with Nebojša Vujinović Vujo. (Although that’s the name he gives me, he has sometimes gone by just Nebojša Vujinović, including on the registration information for some of his domains.) It’s midnight in Belgrade, Serbia, where he lives with his girlfriend and their toddler, but he’s wide awake and chatty. Vujo attributes his erratic sleep schedule to years of late nights working as a DJ and still makes music—he likes to mix pop with Balkan folk and is working on a new song called “Fat Lady.” But right now he’s eager to talk, human-to-human, about his AI-fueled hustle.

    He gets why writers are unhappy that their work has been erased and replaced by clickbait. (The Hairpin’s founding editor, Edith Zimmerman, calls his version of the site “grim.”) But he defends his choices, pointing out that his life has been tougher than that of the average American blogger. Although ethnically Serbian, Vujo was born in what is now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his family fled during the breakup of Yugoslavia. “I had two wars I escaped. I changed nine elementary schools because we were moving. We were migrants,” he says. “It was terrible to grow up in this part of the world.” He says his economic options have been limited, and this was simply a path available to him.

    Vujo also insists that he does have editorial standards; although the majority of the blog posts he publishes are created with ChatGPT, he employs a staff of about a dozen human editors to check its work to avoid anything outright offensive. “Maybe it would be better for you that I’m a bad guy,” he tells me. “Better for your story. But I’m just an ordinary guy.”

    Easy, Fast, and Insane

    Vujo’s first big domain squatting victory came in 2017 when Italian chef Antonio Carluccio died, and it appears someone forgot to renew one of the websites associated with him. Vujo still talks about his good luck in scooping up the domain and turning it into a cooking-themed content mill. “It’s mine now,” he tells me cheerfully. “He almost invented carbonara—he’s a big celebrity!” Vujo has since also picked up Pope2you.net, formerly an official Vatican website meant to connect Pope Benedict XVI with younger believers, and TrumpPlaza.com, named after residential towers in Jersey City, New Jersey, codeveloped by former President Trump.

    Vujo says his most significant—and consistently profitable—purchase is women’s media outlet The Frisky, which he acquired not long after he scored the Carluccio site. “It cost a lot—all the money that I had—but that was my opportunity,” he says. “It was life-changing.” (BuzzFeed News reported on the purchase in 2019.) Vujo says the site generated over $500,000 in the first year he bought the domain. In addition to healthy income from ads and clients willing to pay for backlinks, the brand was a magnet for companies willing to pay for sponsored posts. Because the outlet had long embraced risque topics, Vujo says sex toy companies are eager to do business with him.

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