It has been rumored for a while that Google is considering charging users for AI-powered results, especially regarding the idea of a premium search option that uses generative AI.
Whether that will happen remains to be seen, but Google is The era of free access to the Gemini API is coming to an end, signaling a new financial strategy in AI development.
Developers previously enjoyed free access to lure them to Google’s AI products and away from OpenAI’s, but that will change. OpenAI was the first to market and has already monetized its APIs and LLM access. Now Google plans to emulate this through its cloud and AI Studio services, and it looks like the days of unfettered free access are numbered.
RIP PaLM API
In an email to developers, Google said it will close access to its PaLM API (the pre-Gemini model used to build custom chatbots) through AI Studio for developers on August 15. This API was deprecated back in February.
The tech giant hopes to convert free users into paying customers by promoting the stable Gemini 1.0 Pro. “We encourage test prompts, tuning, inference, and other features with stable Gemini 1.0 Pro to avoid interruptions,” the email reads. “You can use the same API key you used for the PaLM API to access Gemini models via Google AI SDKs. ”
The price for the paid subscription starts at $7 for one million input tokens and increases to $21 for the same number of output tokens.
There is one exception to Google’s plans: PaLM and Gemini will remain accessible to customers who pay for Vertex AI in Google Cloud. However, if HPCThread points out: “Mainstream developers with a cheaper budget typically use AI Studio because they can’t afford Vertex.”