Friday, January 31, 2025

Faster, stronger Flash 2.0 now available in the Gemini app for all users

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The next time you use Gemini, you might notice it’s a little faster. 

Google announced that Gemini 2.0 Flash AI is now rolling out to all users in the Gemini app on both desktop and mobile. It appears to be rolling out on desktop more quickly, as I saw it on my laptop, while the Gemini app on my Google Pixel was still limited to 1.5 Flash or 2.0 Flash Experimental.

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This 2.0 model provides faster responses and stronger performance, Google says, helping with tasks like writing, brainstorming, and learning — and making the app feel much smoother. The new version also responds better to image input. (Free users can upload images but not other files.)

When the 2.0 Flash model debuted in experimental mode last year, Google called it a “workhorse model with low latency” and said that it excels at complex tasks like coding, math, and reasoning, and that it performed twice as fast at Gemini 1.5 Flash. 

Previously, 2.0 Flash was only available to Gemini Advanced subscribers who pay $19.99 a month for add-ons like a one million token context window for up to 1,500 pages of file uploads, priority access to features such as Deep Research and Gems, 2TB of storage from Google One, and the ability to upload a code repository. 

If you have any existing conversations you want to finish up or archive, or you just don’t like the way Flash 2.0 is performing, Gemini 1.5 Flash and 1.5 Pro will still be available for a few weeks. You can click the dropdown menu at the top to change which model you’re using.

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Google also announced that it’s upgrading image generation in Gemini to Imagen 3, its highest-quality text-to-image model, which can generate thousands of images with improved detail, richer lighting, and fewer distracting artifacts. This is available to all users. 

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