Gemini is Google DeepMind’s family of AI models, first launched in December 2023. If you used Google’s earlier chatbot Bard, you have already met its ancestor: Bard was renamed and rebuilt on the new Gemini models, and the consumer experience now lives in the Gemini app at gemini.google.com (plus mobile apps).
Natively multimodal — not bolted on
Most AI assistants learned text first and had image understanding “bolted on” later. Gemini was different: it was trained from the start on text, images, audio and video together, inside a single model. That matters in practice. When Gemini reads a chart, it isn’t translating a picture into words for a separate language model — the same network that understands your sentence also understands the pixels, the spoken word and the video frame. The result is smoother reasoning across formats: a photo of a broken part, a recording of a meeting and a PDF of the manual can all live in one conversation.
Meet the family
| Tier | Built for | Think of it as… |
|---|---|---|
| Flash | Fast everyday answers, quick drafts, high-volume tasks | The sprinter |
| Pro | Complex reasoning, long documents, harder coding and analysis | The scholar |
You don’t need to memorize model names — the app picks a sensible default and lets you switch when you want more firepower for a tough problem.
Free tier and paid subscriptions
- Free tier: everyday chatting, file uploads and useful limits at no cost with a Google account.
- Paid Google AI subscriptions: higher limits, the most capable models and extra features (exact plans and pricing change often, so check Google’s current offering).
Key takeaway: Gemini is one model trained across text, images, audio and video — which is why it feels natural doing things that trip up text-only assistants.
Enjoying the preview? Unlock the full Gemini course — 5 more lessons, exam & certificate.
Unlock for ₱200.00 →