Google Makes Gemini 2.0 AI Model Available to Everyone
When it comes to AI developments, Google has been busy. In December 2024 the company announced Gemini 2.0, its family of next-era of AI models built for the agentic AI age and quickly got them into the hands of developers and trusted testers via experimental model Gemini 2.0 Flash.
Since, it has launched a new feature, Deep Research, which uses advanced reasoning and long context capabilities to act as a trusted research assistant, has updated enhanced thinking model 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, and hinted at strong AI ambitions for the year ahead in an earnings call with CEO Sundar Pichai.
Gemini 2.0 Flash has now been made generally available via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Vertex AX, meaning developers can now begin building applications with the technology. It comes with improved performance in key benchmarks and will soon feature image generation and text-to-speech, according to a Google blog.
In the same announcement Google said it is also releasing an experimental version of Gemini 2.0 Pro, its model for coding performance and complex prompts and is launching a new model, Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite. This is a large language model aimed at providing cost-effective AI without compromising on quality.
Lastly, the company also said its enhanced reasoning model Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking will be available to Gemini App users on desktop and mobile. Google DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu said in the blog announcement: “All of these models will feature multimodal input with text output on release, with more modalities ready for general availability in the coming months.”
Gemini 2.0: enabling a universal assistant
The Gemini 2.0 family is built specifically for the agentic era – Google describes Flash as its ‘workhorse model’ with low latency and enhanced performance at the cutting edge of its technology.
At its launch in late 2024 Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said: “Over the last year, we have been investing in developing more agentic models, meaning they can understand more about the world around you, think multiple steps ahead, and take action on your behalf, with your supervision."
Picahi touched on Gemini 2.0’s capabilities, explaining: “With new advances in multimodality — like native image and audio output — and native tool use, it will enable us to build new AI agents that bring us closer to our vision of a universal assistant.”
He touched on Gemini 1.0, the first Gemini model that drove advances in understanding information across text, video, images and code and said that “if Gemini 1.0 was about organising and understanding information, Gemini 2.0 is about making it much more useful.”
Google’s AI journey
Pichai discussed the company’s future AI ambitions during an Alphabet Inc. earnings call on Tuesday 4 February, stating that Google Search is in the midst of a ‘journey’ around AI.
He said Alphabet’s strong performance in the last quarter of 2024 had been driven by its leadership in AI, outlining three core areas of its differentiated full stack approach to the technology: its leading AI infrastructure, world-class research capabilities, and the products and platforms it uses to bring innovation to people at scale.
During the call Pichai touched on intentions to support search with AI features from the company’s research lab, DeepMind, and referred to the lab’s multimodal AI system Project Astra. This is capable of processing live video from a computer screen or camera and answering user questions about what AI sees in real time.
Pichai told those on the call: “As AI continues to expand the universe of queries that people can ask, 2025 is going to be one of the biggest years for search innovation yet.”
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