Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during an Alphabet investor call this afternoon that Google's artificial intelligence assistant Gemini does not currently have ads, but the company has "very good ideas" to put ads in it in the future.
Right now, users can access Gemini for free or pay for a subscription to use premium features, but it sounds like ads may become part of the product at some point.
During the call, a Wells Fargo analyst asked Pichai how one should view "Gemini's future monetization opportunities" and whether the company saw a potential "advertising component." He replied:
In terms of monetization, currently our focus is on the free tier and subscriptions. But, as you see at Google, we always want to be user experience-driven, and we do have great ideas around the concept of native advertising. But you'll see that we lead with user experience.
I think we're always focused on making the product work and reach billions of users at scale. Advertising is an important aspect of this strategy. As you've seen on YouTube, we'll be giving our users more choices over time. But for this year, I think we're going to focus on the subscription direction.
Based on that last sentence, it looks like users won't have to worry about ads in Gemini for at least this year. However, Google's entire business is built on advertising, and it seems like we should expect them to show up in Gemini at some point. After all, they already appear in the Artificial Intelligence Overview.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. As part of the earnings report, Google also announced plans to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures this year to help it stay ahead of the artificial intelligence race.