Google will put AI into the hands of more Web surfers and has teased a US$250 (R4 500)/month subscription for its AI power users, its latest effort to fend off growing competition from start-ups like OpenAI.
Google unveiled the plans amid a flurry of demos that included new smart glasses during its annual I/O conference in Mountain View, California, which has adopted a tone of increased urgency since the rise of generative AI challenged the tech company’s longtime stronghold of organising and retrieving information on the internet.
In recent months, Google has become more aggressive in asserting it has caught up to competitors after appearing flat-footed upon the release of Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022.
On Tuesday, it further laid out a vision for Google Search that lets consumers ask virtually anything, from simple queries to complex research questions, from analysing what a smartphone camera sees to fetching an event ticket to buy. Google likewise said it aims to build AI that is personal and proactive, whether phoning a store for users or sending students a practice test generated on the fly.
CEO Sundar Pichai said at the conference that Google would build such AI with the cost in mind as well. “Over and over, we’ve been able to deliver the best models at the most effective price point,” he said.
Google’s AI assistant Gemini app now has more than 400 million monthly active users, Pichai said.
In a major update, the company said consumers across the US now can switch Google Search into “AI Mode”. Showcased in March as an experiment open to test users, the feature dispenses with the web’s standard fare in favour of computer-generated answers for complicated queries.
AI Ultra Plan
Google also announced an “AI Ultra Plan”, which for $250 monthly provides users with higher limits on AI and early access to experimental tools like Project Mariner, an internet browser extension that can automate keystrokes and mouse clicks, and Deep Think, a version of its top-shelf Gemini model that is more capable of reasoning through complicated tasks.
The price is comparable to $200 monthly plans from AI model developers OpenAI and Anthropic, underscoring how companies are exploring ways to pay for the exorbitant price tag of AI development. Google’s new plan also includes 30TB of cloud storage and an ad-free YouTube subscription.
Read: Google unleashes big Android redesign
Google already offers other subscription options, including a $20/month service with access to some AI capabilities unavailable for most free users and cheaper plans with additional cloud storage. Last week, the company said it had signed up more than 150 million subscribers across those plans.
Pichai told reporters that the rise of generative AI was not at the full expense of online search. This “feels very far from a zero-sum moment”, said Pichai. “The kind of use cases we are serving in search is dramatically expanding” because of AI.
Google made a return to a bumpy effort years ago around smart glasses, demonstrating frames with its new Android XR software. Since its early efforts, rival Meta Platforms has brought its own glasses with AI to market.
On stage, two Google officials had a conversation in different languages while the glasses typed up translations for them, viewed through the frames’ lenses.
Gemini, meanwhile, answered queries about one of the wearer’s surroundings as she walked around Mountain View’s Shoreline Amphitheatre.
An XR headset being developed in partnership with Samsung will launch later this year, an official said. Google also announced new partnerships with glasses designers Warby Parker and Gentle Monster to develop headsets with Android XR.
Tuesday’s announcements included further updates to Google’s work to deliver a “universal AI agent”, which can perform tasks on someone’s behalf without additional prompting.
In a number of demos, Google drew on capabilities developed in a testing ground it has called Project Astra to show off what its latest AI could do. These included pointing a smartphone camera at a written invitation and having AI add the event to a user’s calendar.
Google also presented a new AI model called Veo 3 that generates video and audio to create more realistic film snippets for creators. — Kenrick Cai, Jeffrey Dastin and Greg Bensinger, with Juby Babu, (c) 2025 Reuters
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