Google's Bard Advanced is getting a subscription paywall soon

Sorry, this premium AI experience is gonna cost some money.
 By 
Chance Townsend
 on 
A Google logo displayed on a personal computer and a Bard logo displayed on a mobile phone
Credit: NurPhoto via Getty

Google is giving its Bard AI chatbot the premium subscription treatment à la OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus.

The tech giant announced Tuesday in a Q4 earnings call that it plans to lock the recently announced Bard Advanced behind a subscription model. There were no talks about costs or a release date, but Bard in its current form is available to users for free, compared to the $20 per month it costs to use ChatGPT-4 with a Plus subscription.

According to Google, Bard Advanced is designed to be more "complex" and have "better responses." It will be powered by the soon-to-be-released Gemini Ultra, Google's multimodal large language model, which is set for an "early 2024" release. Bard is currently running on Gemini Pro, which is meant to compete with GPT-3.5, with Ultra touted by Google as a model that will compete with, and in some cases even surpass, GPT-4.


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Based on the hype Google is drumming up for Gemini Ultra, it's speculated that users can expect to pay a similar price to OpenAI's premium tier for a chance to use this advanced generative AI.

Headshot of a Black man
Chance Townsend
Assistant Editor, General Assignments

Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and Mother Jones.

In his free time, he cooks, loves to sleep, and greatly enjoys Detroit sports. If you have any tips or want to talk shop about the Lions, you can reach out to him on Bluesky @offbrandchance.bsky.social or by email at [email protected].

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