Google unveils Gemini 2.5 in a desperate bid to catch up with ChatGPT
Today, Google introduces Gemini 2.5. Initially, it will only be available as the experimental Gemini 2.5 Pro. And yes, as you can predict, the search giant is calling its newest AI model the most advanced version yet.
While the company promises huge improvements in reasoning and coding, the move feels more like Google playing catchup to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Let’s be honest, folks -- ChatGPT has dominated public attention and enterprise adoption for months.
Labeled a “thinking model,” Gemini 2.5 Pro is said to process problems more like a human by reasoning internally before responding. It lands at the top of the LMArena leaderboard, a ranking based on human preferences, and leads on several technical benchmarks in math, science, and code. Google claims the model scored 18.8 percent on the “Humanity’s Last Exam,” a test designed to measure knowledge and reasoning across challenging domains.
The model also shows marked improvement in programming tasks. On SWE-Bench Verified -- a benchmark focused on agent-based code evaluations -- Gemini 2.5 Pro reaches 63.8 percent using a custom setup. It reportedly handles tasks such as generating games or full applications from a single sentence prompt, but it’s unclear how much of that translates into actual productivity for users.
Gemini 2.5 Pro supports a 1 million token context window (with 2 million promised soon), letting it process large chunks of data including text, images, video, and even code repositories. That sounds impressive on paper, but context size alone doesn’t guarantee real-world usefulness.
Pricing hasn’t been shared yet, but Google says higher rate limits will be offered for scaled use. The model is also coming to Vertex AI in the near future.
For all the talk of next-generation AI, Google still has to prove that Gemini 2.5 Pro can do more than theoretical benchmarks. The real challenge is pulling developers and businesses away from ChatGPT -- and that will not be easy.
Image credit: peshkova/depositphotos.com