Google Brings Custom Chatbots and Better Image Generation Capabilities to Gemini

Google is improving its Gemini AI today with the ability for paid customers to create custom versions of the chatbot. Imagen 3, Google’s latest image generation model, is also coming to Gemini, and it will bring back the ability to generate images of humans after Google disabled it earlier this year.

At its I/O developer conference in May, Google previewed “Gems,” which are custom versions of its Gemini chatbot tailored for certain tasks. This is similar to the custom GPTs from OpenAI and the custom Copilots from Microsoft, which are both only available for paying customers.

“With Gems, you can create a team of experts to help you think through a challenging project, brainstorm ideas for an upcoming event, or write the perfect caption for a social media post. Your Gem can also remember a detailed set of instructions to help you save time on tedious, repetitive or difficult tasks,” explained Dave Citron, Senior Director, Product Management, Gemini Experiences.

Gems are available starting today for Gemini Advanced, Business, and Enterprise users. Google also created five premade Gems that customers can use as a base before creating their own custom versions of Gemini.

With Google’s new Imagen 3 model, Gemini can now create more realistic images from a natural language prompt. After Google paused Gemini image generation earlier this year after users found it too easy to create offensive content, the company emphasized that Imagen 3 has built-in safeguards.

“With Imagen 3, we’ve made significant progress in providing a better user experience when generating images of people,” Citron said today. “We don’t support the generation of photorealistic, identifiable individuals, depictions of minors or excessively gory, violent or sexual scenes. Of course, as with any generative AI tool, not every image Gemini creates will be perfect, but we’ll continue to listen to feedback from early users as we keep improving.”

The ability to generate images of people will roll out first to Gemini Advanced, Business, and Enterprise users over the coming days. Gemini Advanced is priced at $19.99/month, but Google offers a free one-month trial.