this means even on my tablet I'm gonna be stuck turning my smart lights on and off with Gemini flash lite. So many times when I've run out of COMPUTE, it's reduced itself to flash lite And it would just spit out nonsense BS saying that it can't turn the lights on or off, or it can't set calendar events, when I know for a fact that it can. I'm really looking forward to having to fight to get my bedroom lights to turn on every night now.
I do not recognize the world these people live in.
This is what happens when you give people a valuable service for free. You can't take it away without a lot of complaining and loss of good will.
Flash-lite is pretty capable and getting that entirely for free is not a bad deal at all.
It was always obvious Google couldn't keep letting non-paying users use Flash and Pro.
I'm not a fan of how they bundled their plans but they're not too bad especially when shared with a family. I think I've got almost 1TB of Google Photos at this point.
Isn't Google Maps the main culprit here if it didn't update the info? And more generally, also the castle management for not updating Google Maps to reflect its closed?
Also this is the Flash-Lite model, which they specifically don't want you to pay for.
> I mean, sure you can blame Google Maps, but it wasn't my choice to consult Google Maps.
Okay but isn't that obvious that's what would happen? Like even if you ask a human, that's where they will consult and if it shows its open, it doesn't really have any incentive to question the validity of the data.
But more so, it is on the management of the place as well that they have a Google My Business Page but do not update it. If they say its open, why would Google Maps mark it as closed? If it's marked as open on Google Maps, why would Gemini Flash Lite refute that?
Blaming the LLM for this makes little sense imo. Sure it's a dumb model but in this case, it was set up to lose.
The point is that it got to the right answer eventually, which conceivably it could have done at the first step:
1. Open on Google Maps?
2. Validate no extra notices posted on their public website
Even the fact that there is are special notices sometimes posted on their public website is something a model could have been trained to understand, same as a human being.
Yeah but are you willing to pay additional cost for marginal improvement in accuracy that only pays off sometimes? If so, take the judgement and use a better model.
Looks like Google Maps said the location was open but there was some notice that said it would be closed and Google Maps didn't account for it? You'd have made the same mistake anyway
I think this move will be part of a more global trend when other AI companies get publicly traded.
Because model providers have no moat, and the price of inference is quite large compared to just search, providing it for free makes no sense.
Right now, the goal of the free chatgpt and claude tiers is to accustom more people to AI, to create a new market, not to capture customers.
This strategy makes sense for start-ups with a lot of funding, but not for companies that need to be profitable. Apart from google, no large company is providing free inference to their large models in a consumer app (apart from meta maybe).
Ever checked how much Google's users actually "pay" for search? It was about 12$ per month, in 2016. It's going to be more now. Yes, really.
That's how much advertisers pay, on average, per user, and therefore how much you pay extra per month for things. Because otherwise the advertisers wouldn't have the money to buy this.
Flash and Pro models are moving to paid plans, free users will only get Flash-Lite. Flash-Lite is the same model used by the Android phone Gemini app and AI Overviews in Google Search, which is very poor at reasoning and makes many errors.
Personally, I've been using the free plan quite a lot and never hit a rate limit, but noticed the quality dropping. Pro was almost never available. Perhaps they aren't able to deliver a good quality Flash model to free users.
I understand why would would move Pro variant behind paywall, you don’t get many uses of it anymore on free tier. But moving the Flash version behind paywall is kinda crazy.
Did we forget what Flash was meant for? I have tried Flash-lite, in my tests, almost all the recent models we have today are good and enough for most daily tasks.
Flash-lite is one of the few models available that is easy to notice its flaws. Its good to summarize data (for example search results), that’s it.
The "Flash" branding is doing a disservice here, it makes it sound like the cheap and bad model, but 3.8 Flash is really quite good, especially for it's price.
Flash-Lite is closer to what Flash originally was, both in terms of the pricing and the intelligence level compared to other models in the same generation.
I'm always amazed how entitled people are these days for free stuff. That being said, it does show costs are piling up for these AI companies if even Google is restricting free access to a relatively smaller model amid the AI hype train. Good!
The entitled consumer is just a symptom of large scale anti competitive practices. It's classic price dumping by the oligopolists. It's so pervasive that consumer get used to these super low prices (free).
Years of low interest rates fueled by monetary manipulation created the free economy. This is no longer sustainable when creditors demands interest rates better aligned with historical norms.
I've always hated "free" because it sucks the oxygen away from good ideas and redirects money to people who have the connections to get zero risk loans (with no responsibility to pay the principal if things go bad).
Over the past ~20 years we have benefited from VCs valuing growth and distant payoffs, in part because discount rates were low. Now investors have a preference for nearer term profitability (higher discount rates), thus prices are increasing.
It's not that we are entitled to free stuff, but if you have access to models that are incredibly cheaper than Gemini and arguably more performative, it's very reasonable to point out that Google can afford to raise the prices thanks solely to the enormous scale and distribution power, specially with B2B market that rejects Chinese models.
A comment that caught my eye:
I do not recognize the world these people live in.2001: A Space Odyssey, except HAL-9000 hit the token limit and was downgraded. Now the model is too stupid to open the pod bay doors.
[delayed]
This is what happens when you give people a valuable service for free. You can't take it away without a lot of complaining and loss of good will.
Flash-lite is pretty capable and getting that entirely for free is not a bad deal at all.
It was always obvious Google couldn't keep letting non-paying users use Flash and Pro.
I'm not a fan of how they bundled their plans but they're not too bad especially when shared with a family. I think I've got almost 1TB of Google Photos at this point.
This is a much better page than TFA: https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/17004136
That's what they want you to pay for:
https://share.gemini.google/r9T9GPuC0Cjc
Isn't Google Maps the main culprit here if it didn't update the info? And more generally, also the castle management for not updating Google Maps to reflect its closed?
Also this is the Flash-Lite model, which they specifically don't want you to pay for.
It failed to make a connection between "now" and the current time, nothing to do with Google Maps.
You're right, this is Lite. I change my charge to "this is the AI you're going to get on the free tier."
I mean, sure you can blame Google Maps, but it wasn't my choice to consult Google Maps.
I think noticeable here is how hard it is to steer this trash model even when fed already correct information.
I asked "why closed?" and it corrected me to "it's open" with wrong information. Then it got the current time wrong.
> I mean, sure you can blame Google Maps, but it wasn't my choice to consult Google Maps.
Okay but isn't that obvious that's what would happen? Like even if you ask a human, that's where they will consult and if it shows its open, it doesn't really have any incentive to question the validity of the data.
But more so, it is on the management of the place as well that they have a Google My Business Page but do not update it. If they say its open, why would Google Maps mark it as closed? If it's marked as open on Google Maps, why would Gemini Flash Lite refute that?
Blaming the LLM for this makes little sense imo. Sure it's a dumb model but in this case, it was set up to lose.
The point is that it got to the right answer eventually, which conceivably it could have done at the first step:
1. Open on Google Maps?
2. Validate no extra notices posted on their public website
Even the fact that there is are special notices sometimes posted on their public website is something a model could have been trained to understand, same as a human being.
Yeah but are you willing to pay additional cost for marginal improvement in accuracy that only pays off sometimes? If so, take the judgement and use a better model.
Looks like Google Maps said the location was open but there was some notice that said it would be closed and Google Maps didn't account for it? You'd have made the same mistake anyway
I think this move will be part of a more global trend when other AI companies get publicly traded.
Because model providers have no moat, and the price of inference is quite large compared to just search, providing it for free makes no sense.
Right now, the goal of the free chatgpt and claude tiers is to accustom more people to AI, to create a new market, not to capture customers.
This strategy makes sense for start-ups with a lot of funding, but not for companies that need to be profitable. Apart from google, no large company is providing free inference to their large models in a consumer app (apart from meta maybe).
Ever checked how much Google's users actually "pay" for search? It was about 12$ per month, in 2016. It's going to be more now. Yes, really.
That's how much advertisers pay, on average, per user, and therefore how much you pay extra per month for things. Because otherwise the advertisers wouldn't have the money to buy this.
Flash and Pro models are moving to paid plans, free users will only get Flash-Lite. Flash-Lite is the same model used by the Android phone Gemini app and AI Overviews in Google Search, which is very poor at reasoning and makes many errors.
Personally, I've been using the free plan quite a lot and never hit a rate limit, but noticed the quality dropping. Pro was almost never available. Perhaps they aren't able to deliver a good quality Flash model to free users.
Google Gemini API use also moved to prepaid-only starting this month.
There might be a connection
I understand why would would move Pro variant behind paywall, you don’t get many uses of it anymore on free tier. But moving the Flash version behind paywall is kinda crazy.
Did we forget what Flash was meant for? I have tried Flash-lite, in my tests, almost all the recent models we have today are good and enough for most daily tasks.
Flash-lite is one of the few models available that is easy to notice its flaws. Its good to summarize data (for example search results), that’s it.
The "Flash" branding is doing a disservice here, it makes it sound like the cheap and bad model, but 3.8 Flash is really quite good, especially for it's price.
Flash-Lite is closer to what Flash originally was, both in terms of the pricing and the intelligence level compared to other models in the same generation.
Have you see the price for Flash? Keeps going up. Flash 2.5 was a sweet spot.
Fine, but can they at least update the models accessible from the various locations?
gemini.google.com/app runs a mixture of 3.1 and 3.6 while 3.8 is in aistudio
Really would have thought there is an incentive to move everything to one model generation to get scaling efficiency
I'm always amazed how entitled people are these days for free stuff. That being said, it does show costs are piling up for these AI companies if even Google is restricting free access to a relatively smaller model amid the AI hype train. Good!
The entitled consumer is just a symptom of large scale anti competitive practices. It's classic price dumping by the oligopolists. It's so pervasive that consumer get used to these super low prices (free).
What do you mean entitled? It's Google the one trying to shove AI into all their products.
What should be illegal is to try to get customers by letting it use for free or at a low price and the jack up prices
> show costs are piling up for these AI companies
OpenAI cancelling the $200/20x and then introducing the $500/25x was basically the canary in the coal mine.
I am looking forward to the 2026 numbers from Anthropic in preperation for their IPO, because that's where the really big numbers are going to be.
The original „AI labs are bleeding money“ canary is dead since a very long time at this point
Years of low interest rates fueled by monetary manipulation created the free economy. This is no longer sustainable when creditors demands interest rates better aligned with historical norms.
I've always hated "free" because it sucks the oxygen away from good ideas and redirects money to people who have the connections to get zero risk loans (with no responsibility to pay the principal if things go bad).
I like that framing.
Over the past ~20 years we have benefited from VCs valuing growth and distant payoffs, in part because discount rates were low. Now investors have a preference for nearer term profitability (higher discount rates), thus prices are increasing.
It's not that we are entitled to free stuff, but if you have access to models that are incredibly cheaper than Gemini and arguably more performative, it's very reasonable to point out that Google can afford to raise the prices thanks solely to the enormous scale and distribution power, specially with B2B market that rejects Chinese models.
If consumers are required to pay: nooo i want free stuff
If the free stuff is subsidised by ads: noo advertisements are bad!!
what happens to the aistudio.google.com thing? :)