Google Gemini just made two of its best features available for free

ZDNET

Google went from being a dark horse in the AI space to a frontrunner with its Gemini offerings. To keep up that momentum, Google is announcing a slew of Gemini updates that will enhance the AI assistant's overall experience -- including for free users.

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On Thursday, Google announced that it was making two of its most popular features available to all users: Deep Research and Gems. Both of these features will allow users to unlock another level of Gemini assistance, even adding agentic capabilities.

Deep Research

Deep Research is an agentic feature that can conduct thorough research on your behalf by creating a multi-step research plan, browsing the web extensively for you for a couple of minutes, and then creating a comprehensive report.

It is a powerful tool for research because it can complete in-depth research in minutes that could otherwise take users hours. To build on the already powerful experience even further, Google upgraded Deep Research with Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental, which should result in even higher-quality, multi-page reports.

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With the update, Google also shows its thoughts while browsing the web. Despite the updates, everyone will now be able to try it at no cost simply by selecting Deep Research in the new prompt bar or model dropdown, according to the blog post. When launched in January, the feature was only available to Gemini Advanced users, part of the Google One AI Premium plan, costing users $20 per month.

Gems

Gems in Gemini allows users to create their own personalized AI experts on any topic by customizing AI chatbots for their specific needs without extensive coding or machine learning training skills. The feature was only available to Google One AI Premium Plan subscribers when launched. Now, Gems is beginning to roll out for free to everyone in the Gemini app.

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To set up a Gem, a user simply has to give it an instruction, name it, and use it when needed to perform a specific function. Some use cases for Gems are personalizing them to tackle repetitive tasks such as being a coding partner, writing editor, or learning coach.

The feature is nearly identical to ChatGPT's custom GPTs, which can also be instructed to perform a function, be named, and shared with others. At the moment, only subscribers to OpenAI's paid plans, including the $20 per month ChatGPT Plus subscription, can create their own GPTs.

In addition to these upgrades, Google also launched Gemini with Personalization, an experimental, opt-in experience that allows users to connect Gemini to their Search history to better inform the assistant's responses.