Google says people across Southeast Asia are picking up its Gemini assistant quickly, and that the number using it has more than doubled in a year. For Malaysians, the number that matters more is the one on the bill.
In its first Gemini Southeast Asia report, Google says active users of the Gemini app in the region more than doubled over the past year, and that Gemini ranks as the best performer for Southeast Asian languages on the SEA-HELM benchmark. Almost three in four requests come from a phone rather than a computer, and people use voice, photos and video for more than 40 percent of their prompts. Over the year, the report says, the region generated five billion images with Google's Nano Banana model.
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Malaysia is one of six markets the report covers, alongside Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Google does not break Malaysia out on its own, so the headline figures are regional rather than local.
Where Malaysia sits in the language data
Nearly 70 percent of prompts across the region are written in a native language, led by Vietnam at 89 percent, Thailand at 87 percent and Indonesia at 84 percent. Malaysia is not among the three highest. Google does not say why, and with the country working across Malay and English, the report leaves the reason open.
What Google's AI plans cost in Malaysia
The Gemini app is free to use, and the free tier already covers a lot, from image generation to Deep Research. The most capable model and the highest usage limits sit behind Google AI plans, and in Malaysia the range is wide. Google AI Plus is RM23.99 a month. Google AI Pro is RM97.99 a month, which adds the more capable Pro model, now Gemini 4 Argon, along with 5TB of storage and YouTube Premium Lite. Google AI Ultra starts at RM429.99 a month for five times Pro's usage limits, and reaches RM979.90 a month for twenty times those limits, with 20TB of storage.
The more capable model arrives at the Pro tier, and the Ultra tiers layer on higher limits, more storage and extra tools on top. What a given person needs from that ladder is their own call.
Free for some, a monthly bill for the rest
The pricing sits beside a government promise. When it tabled Budget 2027 on 9 October, the government pledged another 100,000 free AI subscriptions, with ChatGPT named among the tools, extending the earlier AI Untuk Rakyat programme, as we reported when the budget was tabled. Those places are a promise rather than subscriptions already handed out. For everyone outside the programme, the paid plans sit above the free app.
Google has not been shy about putting Gemini in front of Malaysians, from replacing Assistant on Android phones to laptop makers like ASUS bundling three months of AI Pro with new machines. The report is Google's own case that the habit is taking hold across the region.
What the report does not change is the bill. The free Gemini app is still there at no cost, and Google's paid plans run from RM23.99 to RM979.90 a month for anyone who wants more.
Photo illustrations by ProductNation.
