Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro is a new, more efficient AI model

On Thursday, Google unveiled Gemini 1.5 Pro, which the company describes as delivering "dramatically enhanced performance" over the previous model. The company's AI trajectory -- viewed internally as increasingly critical for its future -- follows the unveiling of Gemini 1.0 Ultra last week, alongside the rebranding of the Bard chatbot (to Gemini) to align with the new model's more powerful and versatile capabilities. In an announcement blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis try to balance assuring their audience about ethical AI safety while touting their models' rapidly advancing capabilities. "Our teams continue pushing the frontiers of our latest models with safety at the core," Pichai summarized. The company needs to emphasize safety for AI skeptics (including one former Google CEO) and government regulators.