Google’s Latest AI Model, Gemini Pro, Now Accessible in Europe After a Delay
Google has introduced its new smart computer program called Gemini Pro in Europe, a month after it was first launched in the United States. This artificial intelligence (AI) model is one of Google’s largest, and it’s an upgrade from Bard, their previous version.
Gemini Pro is a multimodal large model, which means it can understand and combine different types of information like text, code, audio, image, and video. Google aims to compete with OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT with Gemini Pro, showcasing its capabilities in reasoning, image understanding, and coding on its presentation page.
Gemini Pro is versatile, while Gemini Ultra is even larger and can handle more complex tasks. On the other hand, Gemini Nano is suitable for on-device work.
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced the launch of Gemini, their “most capable” AI model, in December 2023. This week, they announced that Gemini Pro in Bard is now available in 40 countries and more than 230 countries and territories.
However, Google has a history of launching products later in the European market. Google Pay, for example, was launched in the US in 2018 but reached Europe in 2020 due to concerns about market dominance and compliance with regional payment regulations. Similarly, Bard was introduced in Europe four months after its availability in the US and UK, following privacy concerns raised by the Irish Data Protection Commission.
The European Union (EU) has strict data privacy regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented in 2018. This regulatory environment often leads to delays in the introduction of new products.
The AI competition is heating up, with EU countries discussing the future AI Act to protect users from potential AI abuses. Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, many AI tools have become available to the public. Companies like Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI employees, emphasize the trustworthiness of their Chatbot Claude. HuggingFace, a French-American company, promotes its open-source model. Various AI tools are designed for more academic use.
In this landscape, Gemini Pro and ChatGPT are competing to become the most popular AI chatbots, shaping the future of AI interactions.