Google Gemini is getting faster today, will also provide new fact-checking tool

At Google I/O 2024, the company announced a new version of its generative AI system known as Gemini. Google promised the new system — dubbed Gemini 1.5 Flash — would be faster than even the Pro version of Gemini 1.0 and better at working with long prompts.

Today, Google is making good on that promise by rolling out Gemini 1.5 Flash. This is not a slow rollout, either: Google is launching Flash in 230 countries and 40 languages instantly. This is now the basis for the free version of Gemini, with Gemini Advanced still working with Gemini 1.5 Pro, which is slightly superior to 1.5 Flash.

Since it’s rolling out right now, we haven’t had a chance to try it, but Google claims 1.5 Flash offers “across-the-board improvements in quality and latency.” The new Gemini also offers up to 32K tokens — meaning it can have conversations that are much longer than what the previous free version of Gemini could handle.

Unfortunately, another promise Google made related to Gemini is not happening today, which is the ability to upload files from Google Drive or directly from your device, both of which are currently supported with the paid version of Gemini. Google did reiterate that those features are coming soon.

There’s another new feature in Gemini 1.5 Flash, though, that will be great for anyone using it as a research tool. Let’s dive into that!

New fact-check tool in Google Gemini

One of the biggest concerns with generative AI chatbots like Gemini is “hallucinations,” which refer to the generation of factually incorrect information. Google is acutely aware of this problem, as it faced significant backlash recently for AI-generated responses to Google Search queries that instructed people to eat rocks, drink urine, and put glue on pizza.

To help counteract these issues, Gemini is getting a new fact-checking tool. For English conversations in certain countries (Google would not tell us which ones), you will now sometimes see a small “chip” at the end of sentences created by Gemini. Tapping this chip will give you links to resources related to that sentence so you can dive a bit deeper into how Gemini came to its conclusion. This should make it dead simple for people using Gemini as a research tool to double-check Gemini’s responses.

A really cool thing about this is that it will also work for non-public information. For example, if you’re using Gemini’s Gmail extension to create responses based on your inbox, the chip will give you a direct link to the email(s) Gemini referenced for its response. Neat!