Google is giving students a free year of AI Pro and a new Gemini Student Hub

Google is offering U.S. college students a free year of AI Pro along with a new Student Hub designed for studying, coursework, and research. Eligible students in the U.S. can use Google AI Pro for 12 months without paying the usual $19.99 monthly fee, granting them increased Gemini usage, access to Gemini Spark, integration with Gmail and Docs, and 5TB of storage. International students receive a similar offer with Google AI Plus, which includes higher Gemini limits, access to Gemini Omni, and 400GB of storage.

In addition to these perks, Google has introduced a dedicated Student Hub within Gemini. This hub consolidates the various learning tools into one location, allowing students to create Study Notebooks, generate flashcards, and take practice quizzes. Study Notebooks enable users to upload lecture notes and other course materials, after which Gemini can develop a personalized study plan, complete with diagnostic quizzes and targeted lessons based on identified knowledge gaps.

Future updates promise to enhance Study Notebooks further by incorporating graphs, images, and interactive visualizations.

Google's Gemini 3.5 Pro is still in testing due to falling short of internal performance benchmarks, and the company continues to strive to catch up with competitors like Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol. Meanwhile, Gemini Live has received a significant upgrade with the introduction of Deep Research. This feature allows users to initiate a comprehensive research task via a voice conversation, which can be left running in the background. Once completed, a notification will inform the user of the finished report.