Less than a year after debuting Gemini 1.5, Google’s DeepMind division was back Wednesday to reveal the AI’s next-generation model, Gemini 2.0. The new model offers native image and audio output, and “will enable us to build new AI agents that bring us closer to our vision of a universal assistant,” the company wrote in its announcement blog post.
As of Wednesday, Gemini 2.0 is available at all subscription tiers, including free. As Google’s new flagship AI model, you can expect to see it begin powering AI features across the company’s ecosystem in the coming months. As with OpenAI’s o1 model, the initial release of Gemini 2.0 is not the company’s full-fledged version, but rather a smaller, less capable “experimental preview” iteration that will be upgraded in Google Gemini in the coming months.
“Effectively,” Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told The Verge, “it’s as good as the current Pro model is. So you can think of it as one whole tier better, for the same cost efficiency and performance efficiency and speed. We’re really happy with that.”
Google is also releasing a lightweight version of the model, dubbed Gemini 2.0 Flash, for developers.
With the release of a more capable Gemini model, Google advances its AI agent agenda, which would see smaller, purpose-built models taking autonomous action on the user’s behalf. Gemini 2.o is expected to significantly boost Google’s efforts to roll out its Project Astra, which combines Gemini Live’s conversational abilities with real-time video and image analysis to provide users information about their surrounding environment through a smart glasses interface.
Google also announced on Wednesday the release of Project Mariner, the company’s answer to Anthropic’s Computer Control feature. This Chrome extension is capable of commanding a desktop computer, including keystrokes and mouse clicks, in the same way human users do. The company is also rolling out an AI coding assistant called Jules that can help developers find and improve clunky code, as well as a “Deep Research” feature that can generate detailed reports on the subjects you have it search the internet for.
Deep Research, which seems to serve the same function as Perplextiy AI and ChatGPT Search, is currently available to English-language Gemini Advanced subscribers. The system works by first generating a “multi step research plan,” which it submits to the user for approval before implementing.
Once you sign off on the plan, the research agent will conduct a search on the given subject and then hop down any relevant rabbit holes it finds. Once it’s done searching, the AI will regurgitate a report on what its found, including key findings and citation links to where it found its information. You can select it from the chatbot’s drop-down model selection menu at the top of the Gemini home page.
