Gemini 2.5: Google introduces its ‘most intelligent AI model’ yet

Google has begun rolling out Gemini 2.5, which the tech giant touts as the “most intelligent AI model” its research lab DeepMind has developed for the Gemini AI chatbot.

Gemini was introduced in December 2023 as Google’s rival to ChatGPT, which Microsoft-backed OpenAI released in November 2022. It has been running on the Gemini 2.0 model introduced in December 2024.

Now, the first 2.5 release is an experimental version of Gemini 2.5 Pro, which Google says integrates advanced thinking capabilities.

“Gemini 2.5 models are thinking models, capable of reasoning through their thoughts before responding, resulting in enhanced performance and improved accuracy,” Google DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu said in a blog post.

Gemini 2.5 Pro is available in Google AI Studio and the Gemini app for Advanced users. Google said the model would also come to its machine learning platform Vertex AI “soon.”

“We’ll also introduce pricing in the coming weeks, enabling people to use 2.5 Pro with higher rate limits for scaled production use,” Kavukcuoglu added.

According to Google, the new model shows strong reasoning and coding, math and science benchmark capabilities.

“It can comprehend vast datasets and handle complex problems from different information sources, including text, audio, images, video and even entire code repositories,” Kavukcuoglu said.

Until now, Gemini 2.5 Pro was only available to Gemini Advanced subscribers as part of the Ksh.3,700-a-month Google One AI Premium plan.

Google has been integrating its AI advances into its portfolio of products like Search, Android and Workspace.

The Gemini 2.0 Flash model, for instance, has been powering the AI Overviews feature in Search.

This is part of the US tech giant’s play to take on players like OpenAI, which has a Ksh.26,000-a-month ChatGPT subscription for advanced research use.

In December, the company also released its text-to-video model Sora for ChatGPT Plus and Pro users, allowing them to generate videos of up to 1080p resolution, 20 seconds long and in varied aspect ratios.

Other players in the AI race which Google faces include Elon Musk’s xAI, whose chatbot Grok is integrated into his X social networking site.

China’s DeepSeek shook the industry in January when it launched a model it supposedly trained with less advanced chips developed at a lower cost than its Western rivals.