Alphabet announces reduced costs for its leading AI model Gemini

NEW YORK (Reuters): In a bid to attract developers to build on its artificial intelligence platform, Alphabet (GOOGL.O) on Wednesday said it was making a version of its most advanced model available to developers immediately, as well as reducing costs.

Last Wednesday, the Google owner introduced three versions of its most advanced artificial intelligence model called Gemini, a technology capable of crunching different forms of information such as video, audio, and text.

Gemini is capable of more sophisticated reasoning and understanding information with a greater degree of nuance than Google’s prior technology, the company said.

Gemini’s cost has been slashed to between one-half and one-fourth of what costs were in June, the company said Wednesday.

In addition, the company is making available a suite of tools available for developers to customize their own version of Gemini, as well as two new products that will be powered by Gemini soon, one focused on computer programming assistance and the other focused on a company’s security operations. A second version of its image-generation model will be available tomorrow to developers.

Alphabet said it is making three versions of Gemini, each of which is designed to use a different amount of processing power. The most powerful version is designed to run in data centers, and the smallest will run efficiently on mobile devices, the company said.

Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT roughly a year ago, Google has been racing to produce AI software that rivals what the Microsoft (MSFT.O)-backed company has introduced.