According to CEO Sander Pichai, Google's next-generation artificial intelligence chatbot, Bird Advanced, will be a subscription service. This has been suspected since Google first announced the Gemini family last December, but this is the first official statement from the company.

There are three versions of the Gemini multimodal AI model, with Gemini Pro being the intermediate version that currently powers Google Bard. This model recently pushed Bard into second place behind GPT-4-Turbo on the popularity leaderboard for all chatbot services.

The Gemini Nano is used for on-device AI, powering some of the features of the Samsung S24 and Google Pixel 8 Pro. The most advanced model is the Ultra, and it is this model that will be used in the paid version of Google Bard later this year.

With the launch of Bard Advanced, Google will offer premium versions of free chatbots from Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

There are few details about Google Bard Advanced. The only thing we know for sure is that it will feature the Google Gemini Ultra, the most advanced Google AI model.

Gemini Ultra outperforms Pro in all major tests and is multimodal by default. This means it can natively process and understand video, images, voice, and text input. The problem is that no one outside of Google's select group of testers has been able to verify this claim.

Google claims that Gemini Ultra outperforms the most powerful models of open AI in all areas and is capable of insightful conversations across a wide range of topics as well as generating creative content.

I suspect that to make the upgrade worth the price, Google will include access to one of the image, video, and even music generation models currently only available for testing. This could include DeepMind's new "Lumiere" research, which generates more realistic AI videos.

Google is trying to integrate Bardo into its mobile assistant in March, and Bardo Advanced may be announced at the same time. However, Google may wait until May and announce it at the Google I/O 2024 developer conference.

If Google follows current trends in AI chatbot pricing, it will be $10 to $20 per month; ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, and Copilot Pro are all priced at that level; ElevenLabs, StabilityAI, Many of the generative AI tools like MidJourney have similar plans.

We are entering the year of AI commercialization, and the move to pay for Bird's version is also tied to Google's broader subscription strategy.