GOOGLE IS REBRANDING ITS A.I PRODUCTS AND INTRODUCING NEW WAYS TO INTERACT WITH ITS MOST POWERFUL MODEL

Naming things is hard. 

I have four children, so I speak from experience. You give a kid a name, and they're stuck with it. It determines the way others think of them, and the way they think of themselves. You want to give them a name that represents their personality and potential, but mostly you don't want to make a mistake that results in their having a terrible nickname in middle school.

The same is true of product or company names. Well, not the middle school nickname part, but you want to give your product a name that creates the right vibe. If you make a mistake, it can influence the way people think about your product. Remember Qwikster--Netflix's ill-fated attempt to rebrand its DVD-mailing business? 

Today, Google announced that it is renaming Bard, its AI chat experience, to Gemini. You can still visit bard.google.com, but the experience is now called Gemini. But it's more than just a name change. Google is also rolling out a new AI experience, and a new app on Android. 

Look, I think we can all agree that Bard was not a great name for an AI chatbot. Sure, there's the whole Shakespeare reference, but no one was confusing Google's chatbot with poetry. It's not that the experience was necessarily bad, but it was just there. And the name didn't really communicate that it was a thing Google was taking seriously. 

It was also confusing. If you type a question into Google's search box, you might get a Search Generative Experience (SGE) result. Is that Bard? Does it matter? The name change is meant to simplify things.

In a blog post, Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, explains the change this way:

Bard has been the best way for people to directly experience our most capable models. To reflect the advanced tech at its core, Bard will now simply be called Gemini. 

Or, put another way, Gemini is the language model and the experience. That's in contrast to Microsoft's model (no pun intended). Microsoft uses GPT-4, the language model behind ChatGPT, to power its Copilot assistant in Windows and in Bing search. Those are three different names to describe three different things. It can be hard to keep track.

Google says it's making things easier for users in that they only need to know one name--Gemini--for the entire stack. Of course, it's not quite that simple.

To be clear, there are three Gemini models: Nano, Pro, and Ultra. Those names just represent the different sizes of the models. The larger the model, the more capable it is at doing different types of tasks, but the more resources it requires. For example, Nano is a model designed to be able to run on a mobile device.

Google's announcement today is about its Pro and Ultra models. The Pro model is what already powers the Gemini chat experience (previously known as Bard). Basically, the only change here is that instead of calling it Bard, the model and the experience are both called Gemini. 

Then, Google announced a new Gemini Advanced experience that uses its Ultra 1.0 model. That's Google's largest and most powerful model, and this is the first time it is making it available to consumers. 

The other big part of the announcement is that the company released a new Gemini app for Android. If you opt into using Gemini, it will replace Google Assistant, though you'll still invoke it by saying, "Hey, Google." 

There isn't a separate app for iOS, though Gemini is now built into the Google app for iPhone. Gemini is also coming to Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides) and Gmail as well. 

Courtesy Google

To use Gemini Advanced, you have to subscribe to Google One AI Premium, which is $19.99 per month. That's $10 more than the current Google One Premium tier, which still exists. The AI Premium tier will also enable Gemini in Google Workspace apps as well. If all of that seems a little confusing, I point you back to my first sentence: Naming things is hard. 

It is a little confusing that anyone can use Gemini Pro whenever they chat with what was formerly known as Bard, but Gemini Advanced is a higher-level experience that doesn't use Gemini Pro, but instead uses Gemini Ultra 1.0. Such are the problems you have when you simplify.

Still, I think we can all agree that Gemini is a far better name than Bard, and that simple is almost always better. If Google wants people to take its AI products seriously and choose them over, say, Microsoft's, it has to convince them first that Google itself is taking them seriously. Gemini isn't just a better name; as of today, it's also a better experience. 

EXPERT OPINION BY JASON ATEN, TECH COLUMNIST@JASONATEN