Google 250 plan

Let's start with my main source of eye-rolling: Imagen 4. This was supposed to be the next big leap in Google's image generation. The "Ultra" version, locked behind their new $250/month paywall (yes, you read that right), is the real kicker. Looking at their own data (LLM ranking and charts in general is another pile of garbage but alas), it can't even matches up to gpt-img1-high, yes, the same model that's available for free on Chatgpt and Sora. Just take a moment, you can not make this shit up.

"But what about the standard Imagen 4?" I hear you ask. I was genuinely hopeful for this one, maybe a decent, accessible model for some creative fun, like making silly pictures of my friends. So, I jumped through hoops (hello, VPN!) to try it on Whisk. My verdict? Mediocre and feels painfully outdated. Yes, it’s an improvement over Imagen 3, but that’s a low bar. Stack it up against the current capabilities of OpenAI's image generation, and it's a joke. We're talking clunky prompting, questionable adherence, a lack of stylistic variety and niche understanding, and generally meh quality. For a model launching months after OpenAI's latest, it feels like they're still stuck in the last generation.

Then there's Veo 3, their new video generation marvel. The quality, I'll admit, looks decently realistic in the random posts on reddit. But here’s the punchline for those shelling out for the "Ultra" plan: I've seen reports of users getting a measly two video generations per day! Two! At $250 a month! This isn't a tool for creators; it's a severely restricted toy. Anyone seriously thinking they're going to make a movie with this, with those kinds of limitations, is inhaling some potent "AI" crack. Computing power for this quality isn't cheap, I get it, but don't market it as a premium offering if it's this hamstrung.

Even their "new" TTS and conversational voices, while an improvement, just feel like they're ticking boxes and catching up to what others have been doing. And can we talk about the voice naming? "Callirrhoe"? Seriously, Google? With over 20 voices, how is anyone supposed to efficiently pick one when you refuse to use straightforward labels like "male/female" or even "masculine/feminine" if you're trying to be delicate? It's an unnecessary layer of user friction not to mention extremely IMPRACTICAL.

The rest of the I/O was a blur of miscellaneous features I couldn't care less about, agentic this, deep search that, buzzword tools 99% of users won't use... All in all, it was a profoundly disappointing showing. Google seems so desperate to build a user base, throwing around free student plans, that it makes you wonder about their confidence in the actual paid products.

And that brings us back to the $250/month Ultra plan. It feels like... they're just throwing stuffs at the wall? Desperation? Posturing they also have a premium plan? Hard to tell, maybe Google don't know themselves. However, by launching this behemoth, they've also successfully made their standard $20/month Pro plan feel instantly inadequate. I was going to sub for a month just to play around with imagen4 and veo 2, but now? Sora is still a far better toy for your money.