How Google Bard and Gemini are different

AI AI AI, that’s all we hear about nowadays. There are several different flavors of artificial intelligence on the market with Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and other chefs dishing them out. To the common user, it can be tough to differentiate between the products that are sprouting. Thus, many people don’t know fundamental information like how Google’s Bard and Gemini are different.

It might not mean much to the average user looking to AI for casual tasks. However, if you’re looking to have a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of AI, then this is information that you’ll want to learn. Knowing how Bard and Gemini are different will also help you know more about other AI products like OpenAI’s ChatGPE and GPT-4. So, here’s a handy rundown of how these are all different.

What is Bard?

Google launched Bard back in March of 2021. It’s a chatbot that’s meant to take on the likes of ChatGPT. So, that’s the interface that you interact with. You’re able to enter text-based prompts and get results based on them. You’re also able to input images to get text-based responses from the bot. Imagine it as the face of a person. You directly interact with a person to their face, and that’s where you get your responses. 

What is Gemini?

If you’re still unfamiliar with what Google’s Gemini is, here’s a quick rundown (we also have more information if you want to know everything you need to know about Gemini). Google launched Gemini on December 6th, 2023. It’s a multimodal model, which means that it can accept more than one form of media. So, if you want to feed it images, it’s able to understand what’s present in that image. Google says that Gemini can understand text, images, video, and audio.

Versions of Gemini

The company launched Gemini in three different sizes. The smallest version is called Gemini Nano, and this is designed to live on devices. It’s actually powering some AI tools on the Pixel 8 Pro. As you can imagine, this isn’t as powerful as the other versions, but it makes the Pixel 8 Pro one of the smartest phones on the market.

The next size up is Gemini Pro. This is what’s powering Bard. Gemini pro provides more power over the model that previously powered Bard, and it could be very useful for individual developers and smaller companies. In fact, Gemini Pro is currently available for developers to use. At the time of writing this article, it’s free to use, but this is only a limited-time trial.

Lastly, the largest size is called Gemini Ultra. This version, as of the time of writing this article, is not available. When it launches, it will be for large enterprise applications. The two smaller versions are only able to output text as their responses like ChatGPT. However, Gemini Ultra is expected to be able to output different forms of media like text, music, and images. At the moment, we’re not sure how Google is going to implement this, but we’re certain that it will come with a price tag. Gemini Ultra is slated to come out sometime in early 2024. We expect it to come out before the end of January.

How Bard and Gemini are different

It must have been confusing hearing that Gemini was coming out. This put into question what the company was planning on doing with Bard. Was it going to have both of them coexist? Is Bard on its way out? This got more confusing when we found out that Bard was being powered by Gemini. However, this is why it’s important to know what Bard and Gemini are because they’re not the same thing.

As stated, Bard is the chatbot. Gemini, on the other hand, is not a chatbot; it’s what’s called the “Model”. If Bard is the face of a person, then Gemini is the brain. You, undoubtedly, heard about companies scraping data from around the internet to train models. Well, all of the data from the internet goes right into the model; that’s what’s being trained.

When Google is scraping data from the internet, it feeds it into Gemini so that it gets smarter. When you use Bard, it taps into the Gemini model to receive its information.

Pixel 8 Pro and Gemini

A model doesn’t need to be tied to a model to be functional. Let’s use the Pixel 8 Pro as an example. The chip powering this phone, the Tensor G3, has Gemini Nano implemented on it. This powers some powerful AI tools on the phone, but the tools aren’t necessarily associated with a chatbot.

The Pixel Recorder app uses AI to transcribe audio recordings. When it uses that feature, the app taps the Gemini model present on the chip to decipher the text in the audio recordings. So, in this case, the Pixel Recorder app plays the role of the chatbot. The Pixel Recorder is the interface that you interact with directly.

Another example is OpenAI’s products

If you’ve been in the loop with AI products, you’ve been hearing about ChatGPT, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4. Again, many people might be confused about what all of these are. Well, ChatGPT is the equivalent of Bard. It’s the chatbot that you interact with.

GPT-3.5 is the model that powers the chatbot. What’s the difference between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4? Well, if you’re a free ChatGPT user, then the chatbot you’re using is powered by GPT-3.5. This is a powerful model, but it’s not as powerful as GPT-4. That’s the larger and more advanced model.

Think of it as a bigger brain. and it powers ChatGPT if you’re subscribed to ChatGPT Plus. This is the company’s $20/month subscription plan that offers more perks than the free plan. Using GPT-4, you’re also able to use images as input, which is not present with ChatGPT.