Google launches VIP-level AI subscription service
Google is adding a new artificial intelligence subscription service that offers exclusive access to the company's most "cutting edge" AI products.
Called "Google AI Ultra," the new plan includes the highest usage limits and access to its latest AI models and premium features, the company announced Tuesday at its annual developer conference Google IO.
At $249.99 per month, the subscription plan also includes early access features to experimental products as well as a YouTube premium subscription.
"It's for people that want to be on the absolute cutting edge of AI from Google," said Josh Woodward, head of product incubator Google Labs and the Gemini app.
The plan offers a "massive" 30 terabytes of storage, he said.
Google charges for some premium versions of cloud services and AI products under a tier called "Google One AI Premium," which can cost between $19.99 and $149.99 per month depending on storage size.
Google AI Ultra could attract premium users willing to pay a larger price to use Google's products as the company tries to monetize its AI products and diversify revenue streams amid market changes.
Alphabet's revenue growth from advertising, while still strong, has decelerated in recent years. That's in addition to facing the growing threat of users increasingly shifting to search for information on AI chatbots created by companies like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
OpenAI last December launched ChatGPT Pro, a $200 monthly plan that allows "scaled access" to OpenAI's best models and tools.
Google AI Ultra includes the company's flagship AI app Gemini with the newly-announced Gemini 2.5 Pro "DeepThink" mode, which can be used for deep research, Woodward said. It will also include the new filmmaking AI tool Flow, and note-to-podcast tool Notebook LM with the highest limit.
It will continually include "a lot of other early access features," Woodward said.
The Ultra plan also includes more experimental projects like Project Mariner, an agent research prototype that can help a user do up to 10 tasks simultaneously, as well as the latest Gemini models and early access to its Veo 3, the company's newly announced video generation tool, the company said.
The Ultra plan will be available in the U.S. starting Tuesday, and rolling out to other countries in the coming months, the company said.
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