AI: All Three AIs Now at $20/month
...standard pricing for Google Gemini Ultra/Advanced, Microsoft Copilot, and OpenAI ChatGPT Plus
So now it’s official. All three of the leading LLM AI companies, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, now have a top tier AI product and service priced at $20/month. All trying to discern what customers really want in their AI services, and of course rapidly improve their offerings and iterate. Figure out and solve the Unknowns as fast as possible, and provide safe and reliable Knowns in AI features and benefits.
The tech industry generally likes to chase and do new things in similar ways. It tends to apply in terms of both developing products and services, and then figuring out how to price them.
That trend seems to be continuing in this AI Tech Wave, with the latest and greatest LLM AI model Gemini Ultra by Google, which I discussed a few days ago.
The company made its pre-communicated rollout official today, complete with the name ‘Gemini Advanced’, and the pricing strategy for it in a Google One Bundle at $20/month. As Google describes it today:
“Gemini Advanced is available as part of our brand new Google One AI Premium Plan for $19.99/month, starting with a two-month trial at no cost. This plan gives you the best of Google AI and our latest advancements, along with all the benefits of the existing Google One Premium plan, such as 2TB of storage. In addition, AI Premium subscribers will soon be able to use Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets and more (formerly known as Duet AI).”
This is similar to the pricing for the premium AI Chat services from Microsoft for Copilot, and OpenAI for ChatGPT Plus. There’s forms of Bundling of services by all in various tiers, a strategy I’ve described before.
“The big picture: With the paid version, Google is competing directly with OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus and Microsoft's Copilot Pro. Google will try to make the case that it is offering more by bundling 2TB of cloud storage for the same $20 per month price tag.”
“Google is also offering a two-month free trial of the paid service, available both to existing Google One subscribers and non-subscribers.”
“Between the lines: While Google is billing Gemini as the successor to Assistant, the chatbot can't do everything its predecessor can. It can set timers, make calls and manage some smart home products, but it doesn't have the full range of actions that Assistant does.”
The product and its services have various layers, as the Verge explains here. And there will soon be detailed reviews of the three services compared against each other for relative value and features.
Early efforts highlight the comparisons and contrasts, as this piece by Ethan Mollick of One Useful Thing elaborates comparing Gemini to GPT-4 that underpins both Microsoft and OpenAI’s top tier offerings:
“Let me start with the headline: Gemini Advanced is clearly a GPT-4 class model. The statistics show this, but so does a month of our informal testing. And this is a big deal because OpenAI’s GPT-4 (the paid version of ChatGPT/Microsoft Copilot) has been the dominant AI for well over a year, and no other model has come particularly close. Prior to Gemini, we only had one advanced AI model to look at, and it is hard drawing conclusions with a dataset of one.”
And just like his counterpart Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella proactively pitching the Copilot AI strategy, Google CEO Sundar Pichai is out there with the Media. Proactively explaining Google’s strategy and aspirations with Gemini AI in “Google Prepares for a Future Where Search Isn’t King”:
“CEO Sundar Pichai tells WIRED that Google’s new, more powerful Gemini chatbot is an experiment in offering users a way to find information and get things done without a search engine.”
“The way Pichai is rolling out Gemini, Google’s most powerful AI model yet, suggests that much as he likes the good ol’ web, he’s much more interested in a futuristic version of it. He has to be: The chatbots are coming for him.”
“Today Google announced that the chatbot it launched to counter OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bard, is getting a new name: Gemini, like the AI model it’s based on that was first unveiled in December. The Gemini chatbot is also going mobile, and inching away from its “experimental” phase and closer to general availability. It will have its own app on Android and prime placement in the Google search app on iOS. And the most advanced version of Gemini will also be offered as part of a $20 per month Google One subscription package.”
“In releasing the most powerful version of Gemini with a paywall, Google is taking direct aim at the fast-ascendant ChatGPT and the subscription service ChatGPT Plus. Pichai is also experimenting with a new vision for what Google offers—not replacing search, not yet, but building an alternative to see what sticks.”
“This is how we’ve always approached search, in the sense that as search evolved, as mobile came in and user interactions changed, we adapted to it,” Pichai says, speaking with WIRED ahead of the Gemini launch. “In some cases we’re leading users, as we are with multimodal AI. But I want to be flexible about the future, because otherwise we’ll get it wrong.”
It’s good to see all this progress by the leading companies this fast and deep a little over a year after OpenAI’s ‘ChatGPT Moment’ in November 2022.
It’s early days indeed, and customers of all stripes can now sample the best from the leading purveyors at $20/month by all three of the leading ‘mice’ in the AI Tech Wave race.
And of course we will see other offerings by Meta, Apple and many others. Especially in the upcoming ‘Small AI’ race. But these three offerings for now set the stage for what Developers, Businesses, and Consumers can do with AI in 2024 thus far. Stay tuned.
(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)