• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 5, 2024

Google seems to be testing an upgraded version of Bard it calls "Bard Advanced" made available through a paid subscription to Google One, a cloud storage platform. The discovery was made by a couple of developers and shared on X.

It is powered by Gemini Ultra, Google's largest and most capable large language model (LLM) for highly complex tasks, which is an upgrade to the current version of Bard that runs Gemini Pro. The discovery was made separately by developers Dylan Roussel and Bedros Pamboukian, explained on X, and initially reported by The Verge. 

Roussel also found several other updates such as a feature called Motoko that allows users to create custom bots. Another feature that surfaced, called Power Up, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to expand and improve prompts fed to Bard. A task tab to keep track of longer jobs, and a Gallery section that would let users explore different topics are a few of the others mentioned. 

Bard Advanced, if launched as a paid version, could become available at no charge for three months, but only for Google One subscribers, according to Roussel. 

Google One is a subscription plan that gives users more storage across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos, whereas Google Drive is a storage device. It can be shared with family members.

Every Google Account comes with 15 GB of cloud storage at no charge, but it is shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos, the company explains.

Upgrades to a Google One monthly subscription increase total storage space to 100 GB or more, depending on the plan.