Gemini goes personal — free
Google made Gemini’s “Personal Intelligence” free to all US users and added tools to import chat histories/AI memories from other platforms — with opt‑in access to Gmail and Photos for richer context. The rollout coincided with a March core update and a Gemini AI Studio API outage that hit Nano Banana Pro/2 users, and Google also deployed a cheaper Gemini 3.1 Flash‑Lite tier priced at $0.25 per million input tokens. (humai.blog) (gulfbusiness.com) (help.apiyi.com) (businessanalytics.substack.com)
Gemini’s “Personal Intelligence” first appeared as a U.S. beta on January 14, 2026 in a Google blog post written by Josh Woodward that described one‑tap connections to Gmail, Photos, YouTube and Search and emphasized opt‑in controls. (blog.google) Google’s import flow offers two distinct paths: an “Import Memory” copy‑paste prompt that ingests a summary from another AI, and a full “Chat History” ZIP upload for exported conversation archives. (gemini.google) The import feature rollouts were publicly traced to March 26–27, 2026, with Google GPM Maryam Sanglaji identified as steering the “Import AI chats/Import Memory” work and Google quietly rebranding “Past chats” to “Memory.” (deeperinsights.com) Google’s published instructions state chat imports accept.zip files up to 5 GB, exclude images and attachments from prior apps, and surface imported threads with a special icon in Gemini’s chat list. (gemini.google) Gemini 3.1 Flash‑Lite entered developer preview on March 3, 2026 with headline pricing of $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $1.50 per 1M output tokens, plus Google’s documentation and Vertex pages noting Gemini models now offer ~1 million‑token context windows for large‑scale workloads. (blog.google) On March 27, 2026 multiple developer reports and third‑party trackers recorded widespread 503 errors against Gemini AI Studio image endpoints (notably the gemini‑3‑pro‑image‑preview/Nano Banana Pro and Nano Banana 2 models), and Google’s support materials note the system can automatically route requests to the standard Nano Banana model as a failover during Pro outages. (help.apiyi.com)
