Google says you'll need a subscription to use Bard Advanced

Google is riding high on subscription revenue right now. Alphabet just announced its fourth-quarter earnings for 2023, and subscriptions across the board have crossed $15 billion annually. The company plans to grow these numbers even further with a new premium subscription for its conversational AI, Bard.

Google announced Bard Advanced back in December. It will be the company’s most advanced AI helper powered by the new Gemini Ultra architecture. Gemini, Google’s multimodal AI, has three versions. The Ultra is designed for highly complex tasks, and with its arrival on Bard Advanced, users will get access to an AI that can quickly understand and act on different types of information, including text, images, audio, video, and code.

During its Q4 earnings call on Tuesday, Google announced that Bard Advanced will be available to users as a subscription.

“It’s (Bard) now powered by Gemini Pro, and it’s much more capable at things like understanding, summarizing, reasoning, coding, and planning. It’s now in over 40 languages and over 230 countries around the world. Looking ahead, we’ll be rolling out an even more advanced version for subscribers powered by Gemini Ultra,” said Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

Google didn’t share any more details about what Bard Advanced will cost or specifics about a release date. However, the company previously revealed that it would release the new AI sometime this year. It should become available to early testers before seeing a wider rollout.

Google Bard is currently free to use compared to ChatGPT, which offers a $20 subscription tier called ChatGPT Plus. We’re guessing Bard Advanced would also be priced in a similar range.