News

Cloud Giant AI Moves: Microsoft Remakes Copilot and Intros Deucalion LLM, Google's Bard Becomes Gemini

• By David Ramel
• 02/08/2024

Cloud giants competing for AI supremacy traded blows this week with Microsoft announcing a Copilot remake and introducing a new large language model (LLM), while Google changed the name of its flagship AI from Bard to Gemini and introduced an advanced tier based on its latest/greatest model.

Gemini is also the name of Google's "largest and most capable AI model" that was unveiled last December.

"Our mission with Bard has always been to give you direct access to our AI models, and Gemini represents our most capable family of models," Google said in a post today (Feb. 8). "To reflect this, Bard will now simply be known as Gemini."

CEO Sundar Pichai in a separate post explained that Gemini will roll out to the company's Workspaces offering and its cloud computing platform. Regarding the latter, he said: "For Cloud customers, Duet AI will also become Gemini in the coming weeks. Gemini will help companies boost productivity, developers code faster, and organizations to protect themselves from cyber attacks, along with countless other benefits."

Google also launched Gemini Advanced, a for-pay tier that provides access to the company's newest "largest and most capable state-of-the-art AI model," Ultra 1.0.

The company said Gemini Advanced is better at complex tasks, following nuanced instructions and creative collaboration, listing these highlights:

• Gemini Advanced can be your personal tutor -- creating step-by-step instructions, sample quizzes or back-and-forth discussions tailored to your learning style.
• It can help you with more advanced coding scenarios, serving as a sounding board for ideas and helping you evaluate different coding approaches.
• It can help digital creators go from idea to creation by generating fresh content, analyzing recent trends and brainstorming improved ways to grow their audiences.

While regular Gemini is free, Gemini Advanced costs $19.99 per month in U.S. dollars.

As Microsoft has done with its Copilot AI constructs, Google will also infuse Gemini tech into its business software, Gmail, Docs and so on.

Google also announced new mobile apps to roll out the new mobile experience for Gemini and Gemini Advanced.

Pichai also hinted at more AI moves to come: "Developers have been fundamental to every major technology shift and will play an equally important role in the Gemini ecosystem. Hundreds of thousands of developers and businesses have already been building with Gemini models. While today is about Gemini Advanced and its new capabilities, next week we'll share more details on what's coming for developers and Cloud customers."

Copilot for Everyone
Microsoft, meanwhile, updated its web-based Copilot experience (formerly Bing Chat) found at copilot.microsoft.com and its mobile apps.

"Today when you visit Copilot, you will see a more streamlined look and feel designed to help you bring your ideas to life and more easily gain understanding about the world," Microsoft said in its own post yesterday. "We have introduced a cleaner, sleeker look and feel for answers and a fun new carousel of suggested prompts to showcase the power of Copilot."

Microsoft also boosted image-creation capabilities via Designer in Copilot, adding functionality to customize generated images inline in the free tier, while Copilot Pro subscribers will also be able to easily resize and regenerate images between square and landscape presentations while within chat. Going forward, Microsoft said it will roll out the company's new Designer GPT inside Copilot, providing an immersive, dedicated canvas where users can visualize ideas.

In a social media post pictured above, Microsoft also yesterday announced its own LLM upgrade, called Deucalion: "We have also now fully shipped Deucalion, a fine tuned model that makes Balanced mode for @Microsoft Copilot richer and faster." So far, the social media chatter is all the information Microsoft has provided about Deucalion.