Google's Gemini AI: Balancing Free and Premium Features in the Evolving AI Landscape

A Reminder That Google Gemini's Best Features Are All Behind a Paywall

Want Gemini to add events to your Google Calendar with ease? You'll have to pay for that. Exciting news this week for folks who rely on the Google Workspace suite for everyday tasks: A new feature from Gemini in Gmail lets you quickly add the mere mention of an event to your calendar with just a button. It's way easier than adding an event now, which requires manually adding it in another window. However, read the fine print, and you'll see that this feature isn't free for everyone. It's a hearty reminder that AI's best features will likely be behind a paywall. I don't have this particular Gemini ability on my Google account yet. It just started rolling out yesterday and is expected to reach completion by the middle of next month. It could be a few weeks before it reaches you. Also, you'll need a paid tier of either Google Workspace or Google One AI Premium to access it. The latter starts at $20 a month with 2TB of storage space on the backend and unlocks additional Gemini abilities, including access to Gemini 2.0 Pro and Deep Research. Gemini's most practical abilities are behind a paywall. One of my favorite Gemini abilities is that it can tackle up to 1,500 pages of PDF at a time. It's been incredible for research purposes, and since I've had the ability, I've fooled all my friends into thinking I'm a horoscope queen. I figured out how to feed Gemini their birth charts and then ask questions about their personalities and traits. It gave me a deeper understanding of all this stuff so I could make faster connections between different elements. Despite having perused dozens of press releases about what's new in Gemini as part of my day job, it hadn't clicked that I was using a paid feature until recently. Since then, I've periodically checked in with my Google One account to see what's new there. I also went into my Gmail settings and turned on all the "smart" features, which rely on AI for their magic. This includes stuff like this calendar events feature, though it hasn't yet been rolled out. While researching this piece, I found this dead link to a question someone asked a mere nine hours ago. The question is, "Why are some Gemini features locked behind a paywall?" It's still popping up in search engines for whatever reason. Will Google answer it?

3 Gemini Advanced features that have made their way to the free tier

Google's not giving us much reason to pay for Gemini Advanced lately Gemini Advanced is a more capable version of Google's AI chatbot, coming with early access to new Gemini models and cutting-edge features. But Advanced's feature exclusivity has taken a few hits recently: over the past month alone, Google's made a handful of Advanced features free, and recent reporting suggests another one could be coming soon. Here are three Gemini features that started on the Advanced plan, then made their way to the free experience -- plus one that could do the same in the near future. Related Invoking Gemini Live could soon be as simple as pressing your phone's power button Or even just a diagonal swipe Posts 2 Gemini Live Gemini Live is a feature that lets Gemini respond to verbal prompts one after the other, without the need for users to say a hotword or press a button in between individual prompts. Given Gemini's ability to retain context throughout a given session, the overall experience mimics the feel of a human conversation, with two parties exchanging information in a natural rhythm. Live isn't what I'd call an essential Gemini feature, but it removes some friction from longer strings of queries. It's also just plain cool: when Gemini Live was released into Gemini Advanced last August, the ability to have a relatively natural spoken conversation with a disembodied AI voice was still pretty novel. But that novelty wasn't exclusive to the paid Gemini tier for long: Gemini Live came to the free Gemini experience the next month, in September. Related One of Gemini Advanced's most compelling features is now free Gemini Live is no longer a paid feature Posts 1 File analysis image source: google play store Google's been steadily building out Gemini's capacity to automate typical office tasks, and last May, Gemini Advanced got the ability to scan and analyze uploaded documents like Word files and PDFs. With document analysis, you can get summaries of reports, ask questions about contracts, and so on. The ability to upload and interact with documents was exclusive to Gemini Advanced for the better part of a year, but eventually made its way to the free Gemini tier in late February. Gemini Advanced can handle larger files, but what the free version offers should be enough for most tasks. https://www.androidpolice.com/google-gemini-file-uploads-finally-arrive-for-free-users/ Related Google Gemini's free tier gets a feature ChatGPT has had for months File upload for everyone! Posts Saved info Gemini Advanced gained the ability to remember details last November. After that update, subscribers were able to save information to Gemini for the chatbot to apply to future interactions, helping it tailor its responses to your prompts to be more specific to your needs. In late February, Google expanded this capability to the free Gemini experience. Now any user can have Gemini remember personal details. Letting Gemini know your goals and preferences in a way that persists across interactions should make the digital assistant that much more helpful -- and as of last month, all users now have that ability. Related Free users just got access to a much more personalized Gemini Gemini memory for everyone Posts Another rumored feature: Deep Research One of Gemini Advanced hallmark features today is the ability to do what Google calls Deep Research. Based on a prompt that can be as vague or detailed as you like, Deep Research combs the web and assembles information into a report that you can then export into Google Docs to review, share, or edit. In an APK teardown reported last week, Android Authority found evidence that a version of Deep Research could be coming soon to the free Gemini experience. AA called it a "freemium" version, implying the full functionality won't be available in the free Gemini app. But much in the same way the free tier's file analysis features will be enough for the majority of users, I have to think a free version of Deep Research will have most of the Advanced option offers. There are still plenty of Advanced features you can't get in the free version of Gemini, like early access to new Gemini models and the ability to create custom chatbots called Gems. Still, paid Gemini features making their way down to free users is part of the deal: it's happened before and it'll keep happening. That's a win for your average free Gemini user, but it doesn't seem like a great deal for most Advanced subscribers. Related Google's not giving us much reason to pay for Gemini Advanced lately Deep Research may make its way to the free tier soon Posts 2