Gemini ending free use of Flash and Pro models

Gemini ending free use of Flash and Pro models reddit.com

36 points•rjh29•about 4 hours ago•28 comments•

#free #gemini #flash #pro #gemini ending #ending free #pro models #free use

28 comments

fwlrabout 1 hour ago

A comment that caught my eye:

    this means even on my tablet I'm gonna be stuck turning my smart lights on and off with Gemini flash lite. So many times when I've run out of COMPUTE, it's reduced itself to flash lite And it would just spit out nonsense BS saying that it can't turn the lights on or off, or it can't set calendar events, when I know for a fact that it can. I'm really looking forward to having to fight to get my bedroom lights to turn on every night now.

I do not recognize the world these people live in.

epoxia19 minutes ago

2001: A Space Odyssey, except HAL-9000 hit the token limit and was downgraded. Now the model is too stupid to open the pod bay doors.

csande1721 minutes ago

In the old versions of Alexa and Google Assistant (before LLMs), you could memorize a couple of voice commands that they'd reliably recognize to do a really basic task. If you need an oven timer but you've got meat juice on your hands, you yell, "Alexa, set a 30-minute timer!" If you want to turn your bedroom lights on without fumbling in the dark, you yell, "Hey Google, turn on my lights!". That was, like, the main thing they were sold for.

But then Google changed the default voice assistant on Android to use Gemini. So instead of relying on hard-coded "if the user says this exact phrase, do the thing we said would happen" conditions, people now have to hope the model's smart enough to figure what "turn on my lights" means from first principles every single time.

xyzzy_plughabout 1 hour ago

This is what happens when you give people a valuable service for free. You can't take it away without a lot of complaining and loss of good will.

Flash-lite is pretty capable and getting that entirely for free is not a bad deal at all.

It was always obvious Google couldn't keep letting non-paying users use Flash and Pro.

I'm not a fan of how they bundled their plans but they're not too bad especially when shared with a family. I think I've got almost 1TB of Google Photos at this point.

This is a much better page than TFA: https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/17004136

stephbookabout 2 hours ago

That's what they want you to pay for:

https://share.gemini.google/r9T9GPuC0Cjc

altmanaltmanabout 2 hours ago

Isn't Google Maps the main culprit here if it didn't update the info? And more generally, also the castle management for not updating Google Maps to reflect its closed?

Also this is the Flash-Lite model, which they specifically don't want you to pay for.

password54321about 1 hour ago

It failed to make a connection between "now" and the current time, nothing to do with Google Maps.

stephbookabout 1 hour ago

You're right, this is Lite. I change my charge to "this is the AI you're going to get on the free tier."

I mean, sure you can blame Google Maps, but it wasn't my choice to consult Google Maps.

I think noticeable here is how hard it is to steer this trash model even when fed already correct information.

I asked "why closed?" and it corrected me to "it's open" with wrong information. Then it got the current time wrong.

simianwordsabout 2 hours ago

Looks like Google Maps said the location was open but there was some notice that said it would be closed and Google Maps didn't account for it? You'd have made the same mistake anyway

vanyleabout 1 hour ago

I think this move will be part of a more global trend when other AI companies get publicly traded.

Because model providers have no moat, and the price of inference is quite large compared to just search, providing it for free makes no sense.

Right now, the goal of the free chatgpt and claude tiers is to accustom more people to AI, to create a new market, not to capture customers.

This strategy makes sense for start-ups with a lot of funding, but not for companies that need to be profitable. Apart from google, no large company is providing free inference to their large models in a consumer app (apart from meta maybe).

spwa4about 1 hour ago

Ever checked how much Google's users actually "pay" for search? It was about 12$ per month, in 2016. It's going to be more now. Yes, really.

That's how much advertisers pay, on average, per user, and therefore how much you pay extra per month for things. Because otherwise the advertisers wouldn't have the money to buy this.

hypferabout 1 hour ago

Google Gemini API use also moved to prepaid-only starting this month.

There might be a connection

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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