Google Launches Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview: Get an Early Look at the Controllable “Thinking” AI Model

​On April 17, Google unveiled the preview version of its latest AI model, Gemini 2.5 Flash, now accessible via Google AI Studio and Vertex AI. This model introduces a hybrid reasoning capability, allowing developers to adjust the “thinking budget” to balance response quality, speed, and cost. Notably, Gemini 2.5 Flash is priced at just one-tenth the cost of o4-mini, offering significant performance improvements over its predecessor even when the reasoning feature is disabled. In complex reasoning tasks, it ranks just below the flagship 2.5 Pro, maintaining an exceptional price-to-performance ratio.