Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B Becomes the Cheapest Gemini-Powered AI Model

Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B, the latest entrant in the Gemini family of artificial intelligence (AI) models, is now generally available for production use. On Thursday, Google announced the general availability of the model, highlighting that it was a smaller and faster version of the Gemini 1.5 Flash which was introduced at Google I/O. Due to being fast, it has a low latency inference and more efficient output generation. More importantly, the tech giant stated that the Flash-8B AI model is the “lowest cost per intelligence of any Gemini model”.

Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B Now Generally Available

In a developer blog post, the Mountain View-based tech giant detailed the new AI model. The Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B was distilled from the Gemini 1.5 Flash AI model, which was focused on faster processing and more efficient output generation. The company now claims that Google DeepMind developed this even smaller and faster version of the AI model in the last few months.

Despite being a smaller model, the tech giant claims that it “nearly matches” the performance of the 1.5 Flash model across multiple benchmarks. Some of these include chat, transcription, and long context language translation.

One major benefit of the AI model is its price effectiveness. Google said that the Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B will offer the lowest token pricing in the Gemini family. Developers will have to pay $0.15 (roughly Rs. 12.5) per one million output tokens, $0.0375 (roughly Rs. 3) per one million input tokens, and $0.01 (roughly Rs. 0.8) per one million tokens on cached prompts.

Additionally, Google is doubling the rate limits of the 1.5 Flash-8B AI model. Now, developers can send up to 4,000 requests per minute (RPM) while using this model. Explaining the decision, the tech giant stated that the model is suited for simple, high-volume tasks. Developers who wish to try out the model can do so via Google AI Studio and the Gemini API free of charge.