Google Gemini is Google’s flagship AI assistant and the family of large language models that powers it. Originally launched as Bard in March 2023, it was rebranded Gemini in February 2024 when Google unveiled a new generation of natively multimodal models. Today, Gemini is available as a free chatbot at gemini.google.com, inside Google Search, on Android devices, and integrated throughout Google Workspace.
From Bard to Gemini
Google Gemini began life as Bard, Google’s answer to ChatGPT, which launched in limited testing in March 2023. Bard ran first on LaMDA, then PaLM 2. In December 2023, Google announced the Gemini model family — built from the ground up to understand and generate text, images, audio, video, and code together rather than in separate pipelines. The chatbot was officially renamed from Bard to Gemini on February 8, 2024.
The Gemini name covers two distinct things: the model family (the underlying AI) and the chatbot product (the app users interact with). Both share the brand, which can cause some confusion.
What Gemini Can Do
Gemini’s defining technical characteristic is that it is natively multimodal — it was trained on text, images, audio, and video together from the start, not assembled from separate specialist modules. In practice:
- Text: Chat, summarization, translation, writing, reasoning, and research
- Images: Describing, analyzing, and generating images
- Audio: Voice conversations via Gemini Live; real-time speech translation across 70+ languages
- Video: Understanding video content; generating short clips
- Code: Writing, debugging, and explaining code across major languages
- Long documents: Gemini’s context window handles up to one million tokens — roughly the length of several full-length novels — letting it analyze entire codebases, legal files, or research archives in one session
A key practical advantage over some competing AI assistants is that Gemini can search the web in real time during a conversation, grounding its answers in live information rather than relying solely on its training data.
How to Use Gemini
The simplest entry point is gemini.google.com — sign in with any Google account and start chatting. No installation required.
Beyond the standalone app, Gemini is embedded in:
- Google Search — AI-generated summaries appear above search results for many queries
- Android — Gemini is the default AI assistant on Android, replacing Google Assistant on newer devices
- Google Workspace — Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Meet all include Gemini features for drafting, summarizing, and analyzing content
Developers can access the underlying models directly through the Gemini API and experiment for free in Google AI Studio.
Free or Paid?
Gemini is free to use at a basic level. As of June 2026, the free tier includes access to the Gemini 3.5 Flash model, limited access to the more powerful Gemini 3.1 Pro, image generation, voice conversations via Gemini Live, and up to five Deep Research reports per month.
Paid plans are listed at gemini.google/subscriptions/:
- Google AI Plus ($7.99/month) — doubled usage limits and more storage
- Google AI Pro ($19.99/month) — the full one-million-token context window, expanded Gemini 3 Pro access, and 5 TB of storage
- Google AI Ultra ($99.99/month) — maximum limits, deep reasoning (‘Deep Think’), video generation via Veo, and Google Cloud credits
The free tier is a reasonable starting point for most individual users. Organizations using Google Workspace already have Gemini features included in their subscription at no extra cost.
In the News
Gemini has been at the center of a notable talent story: senior researchers from the Gemini team have been leaving for competing AI labs. Most recently, two veteran researchers departed for Anthropic in a move that drew wide attention — see our coverage of the Google DeepMind talent exodus. The team is also managing a delayed flagship release: Gemini 3.5 Pro was pushed to July, missing Google’s own I/O deadline.
FAQ
Is Gemini the same as Google Search?
No — they are separate products. Gemini is a standalone AI assistant. Google Search now includes some Gemini-powered summaries in results, but the two remain distinct tools with different interfaces and purposes.
How does Gemini compare to ChatGPT or Claude?
All three are competitive on standard benchmarks as of mid-2026. Gemini’s edge is its native integration with Google Search for real-time answers and its deep tie-in with Google Workspace. ChatGPT offers the widest range of third-party integrations. Claude is particularly strong at long-form writing and code.
Is Gemini available on iPhone?
Yes — the Gemini app is available for iOS, and the web app at gemini.google.com works in any mobile browser.
Does Gemini store my conversations?
By default, Google saves conversations to your account to improve the product. You can pause this under Activity controls in your Gemini app settings.
Sources: Google Gemini (Wikipedia) · Official pricing