Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence assistant has no ads today, but the company has “very good ideas” about how it might appear in the future, CEO Sundar Pichai said during a meeting with Alphabet investors this afternoon. Right now, you can access Gemini for free or pay for a subscription to use the advanced features, but it looks like advertising may become part of the product at some point.
During the call, a Wells Fargo analyst asked Pichai how people should think about the “future monetization opportunity for Gemini” and whether the company sees a potential “advertising component”. Here is my transcript of Pichai’s response, which I have lightly edited for clarity:
In terms of monetization, we are currently focused on the free tier and subscriptions. But as you saw with Google, we always strive to be a leader in user experience, and we have very good ideas for native advertising concepts. But you will see that we are focused on user experience.
I believe we always strive to make our products work and reach billions of users. And advertising is an important aspect of this strategy. As you saw with YouTube, over time, we will give people more options. But this year, I think you’ll see us focus on subscriptions.
Based on the last sentence, it doesn’t look like you’ll have to worry about ads in Gemini for at least the rest of this year. But Google’s entire business is built on ads, and it seems reasonable to expect them to appear in Gemini at some point. After all, they are already in artificial intelligence reviews.
As part of its earnings, Google also announced that it plans to spend $75 billion this year on capital expenditures to help it keep up in the AI race.
