Google Gemini began rolling out last year and I actually bought a P8P based on some of the promises, only to then find out that many (most) of the AI features weren't going to be made available in the UK.
A year later and it's still the same situation and I've seen no official statement on this so I wondered what the current thoughts were on all this.
It even seems to be the case looking forwards. When trying to sign up to the wait list for new Gemini features such as VideoFX, you need to select your country on a form (and it's a sizeble list to choose from Samoa to Zimbabwe), but the UK isn't even on there.
One suggestion I've heard is that it's due to restrictive AI laws in the EU. But there's two main problems with that argument. Firstly, the UK is no longer in the EU and we haven't been for years.
The other problem with this being down to legal restrictions (EU or not) is that it only seems to be Google that's affected. Gemini as a browser based platform is available in the UK, but many of the Gemini features that are not in the UK, are available via ChatGPT in the UK. So either OpenAI (along with pretty much the rest of the big AI kingpins at the moment) has no problem breaking international law and potentially being locked out of a whole geographic region, or legality is not the concern here.
The other reason I've heard is they are just being cautious and doing a slow roll out. That also falls flat on it's face when many of these features have been available internationally for around a year now, and now the next wave of features is being rolled out with still no sign of even the earlier versions in the UK.
With there not seeming to be any legal restrictions stopping the rollout, and months worth of public international testing, I can't see any reason why they would continue to restrict their user base from the UK.
This post is of genuine curiosity as I can't see the logic behind this decision, but with the 10 figure sums involved, there must be a pretty solid reason. If there isn't a clear cut answer that i've not managed to find, then it could be an interesting discussion point.
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