Gemini 4 Carbon Is Live on Scholarly
Gemini 4 Carbon replaces Argon in AI Chat, video lectures, podcasts, and AI Profiles, with the same access rules and creation credit cost.
Google has released Gemini 4 Carbon, and we are replacing Gemini 4 Argon with it in Scholarly. Your PDFs, notes, recordings, and other sources stay at the center of the work. Carbon is another way to ask questions about that material or turn it into something you can study, watch, or share.
Where you can use Carbon
AI Chat: choose Gemini 4 Carbon on a paid plan to work through a difficult passage, compare sources, or ask a follow-up question in the same conversation. Chat uses your weekly premium chat allowance. It never spends AI Creation Credits. If that allowance runs out, Auto keeps answering until the allowance resets.
Video lectures and podcasts: select Carbon in a supported creator's model menu. Bring a textbook chapter for exam review, a research paper you want explained, or a process document you want turned into training. You can also select it when making an AI Profile.
Available choices follow the creator and your plan. A team's model policy can further limit its catalog. Carbon does not replace Auto or Best, so you can keep using your usual default.
What changes from Argon
Google describes Carbon as a reasoning model for difficult, multi-step work, including scientific problems and dense documents. Its API guide says it can spend more time thinking than Argon on hard tasks. That can also mean a longer wait.
Choose a source you know well, give a difficult task time to finish, and check the result against the original material.
If you previously saved Gemini 4 Argon as your model choice, that selection now opens as Gemini 4 Carbon. Your conversations and saved creations remain in place.
What it costs
Carbon keeps Argon's 4 AI Creation Credit base cost. The creator shows the total before you start. For videos and podcasts, the usual length additions apply: 1 extra credit for a result over 15 minutes, or 2 extra credits over 30 minutes.
Chat has its own weekly allowance, separate from creation credits. See AI models and Plans and Limits for the current rules.
Try it with your own material
- Open a video lecture or podcast creator and add your source.
- Choose Gemini 4 Carbon in the model menu.
- Check the credit total, choose the length and style, and create.
For a video, use a style with a model picker, such as Standard or Freestyle. Ultimate keeps its own setup and flat 10-credit price.
In chat, open the model picker on a paid plan and choose Gemini 4 Carbon. Start with a concrete question, such as: "Explain the worked example on page 12, and show where each step comes from."
