Google unveiled Gemini 1.0 in three sizes — Ultra, Pro, and Nano — calling it the company's first natively multimodal model, trained on text, images, audio, and video from the start. Gemini Pro powered Bard immediately; Ultra rolled out later after further tuning.

Google claimed Gemini Ultra was the first model to outperform human experts on the MMLU benchmark suite, a milestone it used to declare the frontier lead. The launch was Google's full-scale entry into the flagship race after the Bard stopgap.

Gemini 1.0 set the naming and the multimodal-first positioning Google has kept through every generation since, including the Nano tier that later shipped on Pixel phones.