Google appears to be working on an ‘advanced’ version of Bard that you have to pay for

Google appears to be working on an upgraded version of Bard called “Bard Advanced” that will be available through a paid subscription to Google One, as shared by developer Dylan Roussel on X (formerly Twitter).

Bard Advanced seems to be powered by Gemini Ultra, the top tier of Google’s newly announced large language model (LLM), according to Roussel. That’s an upgrade over the current version of Bard, which runs the midtier Gemini Pro. One of the screenshots Roussel shared describes Bard Advanced as a “more capable large language model with advanced math and reasoning skills.” Developer Bedros Pamboukian also discovered a string of code that suggests Google is working on an “advanced” tier.

Additionally, Roussel found more updates that he shared screenshots of, including a feature codenamed Motoko that could let users create custom bots. There isn’t any indication whether users will be able to share these bots, or if they’ll need to pay to access this feature, though. Last year, OpenAI announced it would let GPT Plus subscribers create and share custom bots.

Google may also introduce a new “power up” feature that uses AI to expand on and improve the prompts you feed to Bard. As spotted by Roussel, there’s mention of a “Gallery” section as well that he speculates will let you “explore different topics to see what you can do with Bard.” Other small tweaks revealed by the screenshots include a new “tasks” tab that you may be able to use to keep track of longer jobs Bard is currently working on, like image generation, and a way to add a custom background to shared Bard prompts.

We still don’t know when (or if) these features may become official, and Google didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.