Google launches new AI models and brings ‘thinking’ to Gemini

Google launched its much-anticipated new flagship AI model, Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental, on Wednesday. The announcement was part of a series of other AI model releases. The company is also making its “reasoning’ model, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, available in the Gemini app.

Notably, Google is releasing these AI models as the tech world remains fixated on cheaper AI reasoning models offered by the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. DeepSeek’s models match or surpass the performance of leading AI models offered by American tech companies. At the same time, businesses can access DeepSeek’s models through the company’s API for a relative steal.

Google and DeepSeek both released AI reasoning models in December, but DeepSeek’s R1 got a lot more attention. Now, Google may be trying to put its Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking model in front of more eyes through its popular Gemini app.

As for Gemini 2.0 Pro, the successor to the Gemini 1.5 Pro model Google launched last February, Google says that it is now the leading model in its Gemini AI model family.

Google accidentally announced the Gemini 2.0 Pro model’s release in the Gemini app’s changelog roughly a week ago. But this time, it’s for real. The company is releasing an experimental version of the model on Wednesday in its AI development platforms, Vertex AI and Google AI Studio. Gemini 2.0 Pro will also be available to subscribers to Gemini Advanced in the Gemini app.

Specifically, the new Gemini Pro model excels at coding and handling complex prompts, per Google, and it comes with “better understanding and reasoning of world knowledge” than any of the company’s previous models. Gemini 2.0 Pro can call tools like Google Search, and execute code on behalf of users.

Gemini 2.0 Pro’s context window is 2 million tokens, meaning it can process about 1.5 million words in one go. Expressed another way, Google’s newest AI model could ingest all seven books in the Harry Potter series in a single prompt and still have about 400,000 words left over.

Google is also making its Gemini 2.0 Flash model generally available on Wednesday. This model was announced in December and is now available to all users of the Gemini app.

Lastly, possibly to rival the excitement surrounding DeepSeek’s models, Google is introducing a new, more cost-efficient AI model, Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite. The company says this model outperforms its Gemini 1.5 Flash model, but runs at the same price and speed.