Gemini App Now Supports Audio Files, Google Clarifies Usage Limits

Google has rolled out three significant updates to its Gemini-powered products, marking a major step forward in the accessibility and functionality of its AI ecosystem. The Gemini app now supports audio file uploads, a feature long requested by users, with the company highlighting it as the "#1 request" in a post by Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Labs and Gemini. Free users can upload audio files up to 10 minutes long and are limited to five prompts per day. AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers enjoy expanded capabilities, including audio uploads of up to three hours and significantly higher usage limits. All users can upload up to 10 files at once across various formats, including within ZIP archives, enhancing the app’s versatility for research and content processing. In parallel, Google Search’s AI Mode has expanded to support five new languages: Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese. This enhancement, powered by the integration of Gemini 2.5, enables users worldwide to ask complex, multilingual questions and explore web content more deeply in their native languages. Google emphasizes that this move broadens access to AI-driven search for billions of users who previously faced language barriers. Meanwhile, NotebookLM, Google’s AI-powered research assistant, has received a major upgrade focused on report generation. It now offers a variety of output formats—including blog posts, study guides, briefing documents, flashcards, and quizzes—based on uploaded documents, files, and media. The tool supports over 80 languages and allows users to customize the structure, tone, and style of the generated content. This flexibility makes it ideal for students, professionals, and content creators. Google confirms that the feature will be fully available by the end of the week. These updates follow a rapid series of AI advancements from Google in recent months. In August, Gemini began automatically recalling user preferences and conversation history. The same month, free users gained access to Workspace’s video generation tool, Vids. In September, Google Photos was upgraded with Veo 3, enabling free users to generate silent 4-second videos from still images. These moves signal Google’s push to democratize advanced AI tools across its suite of products. To clarify earlier ambiguities around usage limits, Google has updated its Help Center with clear, tiered specifications. Free users now receive five daily prompts with Gemini 2.5 Pro, 100 with AI Pro, and 500 with AI Ultra. Free accounts are also limited to five Deep Research reports and 100 AI-generated images per day. For users needing more, AI Pro and Ultra plans unlock 1,000 images daily. These transparent limits help users understand what’s included at each subscription level. The updates reflect Google’s broader strategy to integrate AI deeply into everyday tools while balancing accessibility and scalability. By expanding language support, enhancing multimodal input like audio, and improving content creation capabilities, Google is positioning Gemini as a central hub for AI-powered productivity. The company continues to walk a fine line between innovation and user experience, ensuring that powerful features remain accessible to free users while offering premium benefits for paid subscribers. With these developments, Google is reinforcing its commitment to making AI more inclusive, intuitive, and useful across a wide range of tasks—from research and learning to content creation and multilingual interaction. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in digital life, these updates underscore Google’s ambition to lead the next generation of intelligent, user-centric tools.