Google AI Major Update: Gemini 1.5 Flash Price Drop, Expanded Multilingual Support, Comprehensive Developer Tool Upgrade

Google AI announces a series of significant updates, including a substantial price reduction for the Gemini 1.5 Flash model, expanded multilingual support, and enhanced developer tools. These changes will offer more opportunities and convenience for AI developers.

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Surprise Price Reduction for Gemini 1.5 Flash

On August 12, 2024, Google AI announced a significant reduction in the usage cost of the Gemini 1.5 Flash model. This decision undoubtedly brings great benefits to developers:

Input costs reduced by 78%, now only $0.075 per million tokens
Output costs reduced by 71%, now only $0.3 per million tokens

This price adjustment applies to prompts below 128K tokens, and higher token levels will also see corresponding price adjustments. Developers can take full advantage of tools like context caching to significantly save costs when using the long-context and multimodal capabilities of Gemini 1.5 Flash.

Substantial Expansion of Multilingual Support

To meet the needs of developers worldwide, Google AI has expanded the language understanding capabilities of the Gemini 1.5 Pro and Flash models to more than 100 languages. This means:

Developers can use their chosen language for prompts and receive output in that language.
When using the Gemini API, there will no longer be any model execution interruptions due to “language” issues.

This update will greatly facilitate the development and deployment of global AI applications.

Expanded Access to Google AI Studio

Google Workspace users can now directly access Google AI Studio without additional setup. This change provides barrier-free access to millions of users while giving administrators the ability to control access to AI Studio.

Full Access to Gemini 1.5 Flash Model Tuning

Google AI has opened the text tuning capabilities of the Gemini 1.5 Flash to all developers. This feature allows developers to customize the foundational model by providing additional data, thereby:

Enhancing performance for specific tasks
Reducing the context size of prompts
Lowering latency and cost
Increasing the model’s accuracy on specific tasks

Comprehensive Upgrade of Developer Documentation

To enhance the developer experience, Google AI has comprehensively improved the developer documentation for the Gemini API:

Updated content and navigation
Improved overall look and feel
Released a brand-new API reference documentation

Enhanced PDF Visual and Text Understanding

The Gemini API and AI Studio now support understanding PDF files in both text and visual formats. If a PDF contains charts, images, or other non-textual visual content, the model will process it using native multimodal capabilities. Developers can try this feature in Google AI Studio or the Gemini API.

Ongoing Optimization of Google AI Studio

In recent weeks, Google AI Studio has undergone several improvements:

Comprehensive enhancement of keyboard shortcuts
Support for dragging and dropping images into the interface
Load times reduced by about 50%
Added prompt suggestion feature

These optimizations greatly improve the user experience for developers.

FAQs

Q: When will the new pricing for Gemini 1.5 Flash take effect? A: The new pricing will be effective from August 12, 2024.
Q: How can I utilize the multilingual support of Gemini 1.5 Flash? A: Developers can directly use one of the 100+ languages of their choice for prompts and output.
Q: What changes have been made to access permissions for Google AI Studio? A: Google Workspace users can now access Google AI Studio by default without additional setup.
Q: How can I utilize the model tuning feature of Gemini 1.5 Flash? A: Developers can customize the model by providing additional data to improve performance and accuracy for specific tasks.

These major updates demonstrate Google AI’s ongoing support and investment in the developer community. By reducing costs, expanding language support, and improving tools and documentation, Google is paving the way for AI innovation and creating more possibilities for developers. Whether you are a seasoned AI engineer or a newcomer exploring AI, these updates will bring new opportunities and challenges to your projects. Now is the perfect time to dive into the Gemini API and Google AI Studio!