Technologies

Who the Heck Is Gonna Pay $250 for Google AI Ultra?

Google’s pricey new AI subscription seems to be aimed at people who want to generate a ton of video or code.

Want Google’s biggest and best AI features? A new plan has them all, but with a steep price tag.

Read more: Everything We Learned at Google I/O. AI Mode in Chrome, Gemini Live, XR Glasses and Much More

Google rolled out AI Ultra Tuesday at its annual I/O developers conference, and the new top-tier model features the best models of its Gemini tool, early access to new video generation models, the highest usage limits in tools like NotebookLM, a prototype for managing AI agents and, as icing on the cake, a whopping 30 terabytes of storage.

For all of that, you’ll pay a pretty penny. Google AI Ultra costs $250 a month (although the company is offering half off the first three months). Not ready to drop $3,000 a year on AI? Google is rebranding its existing AI Premium plan as Google AI Pro, which also offers new features. It stays at a modest $20 per year.

The difference between the two plans centers mainly on the usage limits for AI tools and access to bleeding-edge technology. Google AI Ultra has much higher limits, meaning if you’re making a ton of videos or using Gemini a ton, you might need the pricier option. «It’s for the trailblazers, the pioneers, those of you who want cutting-edge AI from Google,» Josh Woodward, the company’s vice president for Google Labs and Gemini, said during Tuesday’s announcement.

Here’s what’s included in the new Google AI plans.

What’s in the Google AI Ultra plan?

The biggest component of Google AI Ultra is a maxed-out version of the company’s Gemini app. It has the highest usage limits for the Deep Research function, along with the Veo 2 video generation model and early access to Veo 3. The subscription also includes the company’s newest reasoning model, Deep Think in Gemini 2.5 pro. You’ll also get immediate early access to Gemini in Chrome, which allows you to use Gemini to understand information based on the context of the current page you’re on.

AI Ultra features access to Flow, Google’s new AI filmmaking tool that also debuted at I/O. This tool allows you to create clips, scenes and movies with text and image prompts. AI Ultra gets you the highest limits for Flow. (The AI Pro plan also includes access to Flow, just with a limit of 100 generations per month.) It also includes the highest limits for Whisk, an AI image generator that allows you to turn photos into mashups, including Whisk Animate, which creates vivid eight-second videos.

Other features included in AI Ultra aren’t necessarily AI-specific: You’ll get access to YouTube Premium, including YouTube Music ad-free. It also includes 30TB worth of cloud storage. It’s only available in the US for now.

While AI Ultra’s $250 monthly price tag is high, compare it to the top-tier subscription plans from competing AI companies. OpenAI’s Pro plan gives you the best of ChatGPT for $200 per month. Anthropic’s Max plan starts at $100 per month for top Claude features.

What’s in Google AI Pro?

The company’s current AI Premium plan is being renamed AI Pro. The price remains $20 per month, but the new features include Flow’s filmmaking capabilities and early access to Gemini in Chrome. These additions are also coming to the US first.

Google said it is also expanding free access to AI Pro for university students in Japan, Brazil, Indonesia and the United Kingdom. It’s already available free for students in the US.

Who is Google AI Ultra for?

You don’t need to drop $250 a month on AI if you’re just dabbling around with chatbots or making an image or two occasionally. Google’s AI Pro plan likely has everything you’ll need at a much better price.

What about the bundlers who want a lot of storage space? The non-AI features of AI Ultra are pretty cool, but are they worth $250 a month? First there’s YouTube Premium, which only costs $14 a month on its own. You can pair that with Google AI pro for just $34 a month. (And if you want to use a different AI service, even a top-level plan from OpenAI or Anthropic would keep your total below $250.) As for the 30TB of storage, that’s harder to replace. Apple’s iCloud offers 12TB for $60 a month while Dropbox offers 15TB starting at $24 per month.

The distinction really is the usage limits and the cutting-edge features. Google representatives told me that AI Ultra is best for people like filmmakers, developers and creatives who are going to generate a lot of content using AI. If you want to use generative AI to produce a lot of video content or longform video content, you’ll need the highest usage limits you can get. And with all of those files, you might actually need that 30TB of storage.

Even if you’re not using AI to produce a ton of content, you may be interested in AI Ultra if you absolutely must have access to the new features as soon as they roll out. AI Ultra will get early access to things like Google’s Project Mariner agentic research tool and the new Deep Think feature in Gemini.

But if the price tag for the biggest and best subscription plan is giving you sticker shock, don’t worry. AI Pro still comes with plenty of features.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, Dec. 24

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Dec. 24.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I’m Irish-American, but yet 6-Down, which involves Ireland, stumped me at first. Read on for all the answers.. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Wordle or Boggle
Answer: GAME

5A clue: Big Newton
Answer: ISAAC

7A clue: Specialized vocabulary
Answer: LINGO

8A clue: «See you in a bit!»
Answer: LATER

9A clue: Tone of many internet comments
Answer: SNARK

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Sharks use them to breathe
Answer: GILLS

2D clue: From Singapore or South Korea, say
Answer: ASIAN

3D clue: Large ocean ray
Answer: MANTA

4D clue: ___ beaver
Answer: EAGER

6D clue: Second-largest city in the Republic of Ireland, after Dublin
Answer: CORK

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Technologies

Quadrantids Is a Short but Sweet Meteor Shower Just After New Year’s. How to See It

This meteor shower has one of the most active peaks, but it doesn’t last for very long.

The Quadrantids has the potential to be one of the most active meteor showers of the year, and skygazers won’t have long to wait to see it. The annual shower is predicted to reach maximum intensity on Jan. 3. And with a display that can rival Perseids, Quadrantids could be worth braving the cold to see it.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

The show officially begins on Dec. 28 and lasts until Jan. 12, according to the American Meteor Society. Quadrantids is scheduled to peak on Jan. 2-3, when it may produce upwards of 125 meteors per hour. This matches Perseids and other larger meteor showers on a per-hour rate, but Quadrantids also has one of the shortest peaks at just 6 hours, so it rarely produces as many meteors overall as the other big ones.

The meteor shower comes to Earth courtesy of the 2003 EH1 asteroid, which is notable because most meteor showers are fed from comets, not asteroids. Per NASA, 2003 EH1 is a near-Earth asteroid that orbits the sun once every five and a half years. Science posits that 2003 EH1 was a comet in a past life, but too many trips around the sun stripped it of its ice, leaving only its rocky core. The Earth runs through EH1’s orbital debris every January, which results in the Quadrantids meteor shower.

How and where to see Quadrantids

Quadrantids is named for the constellation where its meteors appear to originate, a point known as the radiant. This presents another oddity, as the shower originates from the constellation Quadrans Muralis. This constellation ceased to be recognized as an official constellation in the 1920s and isn’t available on most publicly accessible sky maps.

For the modern skygazer, you’ll instead need to find the Bootes and Draco constellations, both of which contain stars that were once a part of the Quadrans Muralis. Draco will be easier to find after sunset on the evening of Jan. 2, and will be just above the horizon in the northern sky. Bootes orbits around Draco, but will remain under the horizon until just after 1 a.m. local time in the northeastern sky. From that point forward, both will sit in the northeastern part of the sky until sunrise. You’ll want to point your chair in that direction and stay there to see meteors.

As the American Meteor Society notes, Quadrantids has a short but active peak, lasting around 6 hours. The peak is expected to start around 4 p.m. ET and last well into the evening. NASA predicts the meteor shower to start one day later on Jan. 3-4, so if you don’t see any on the evening of Jan. 2, try again on Jan. 3.

To get the best results, the standard space viewing tips apply. You’ll want to get as far away from the city and suburbs as possible to reduce light pollution. Since it’ll be so cold outside, dress warmly and abstain from alcoholic beverages, as they can affect your body temperature. You won’t need any binoculars or telescopes, and the reduced field of view may actually impact your ability to see meteors.

The bad news is that either way, the Quadrantids meteor shower coincides almost perfectly with January’s Wolf Moon, which also happens to be a supermoon. This will introduce quite a lot of light pollution, which will likely drown out all but the brightest meteors. So, while it may have a peak of over 100 meteors per hour, both NASA and the AMS agree that the more realistic expectation is 10 or so bright meteors per hour.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Dec. 24, #1649

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for Dec. 24, No. 1,649.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle is a little tricky, with a double letter that could confuse players. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.