Google Unveils Gemini 2.0 (venturebeat.com) 14
Google unveiled Gemini 2.0 yesterday, almost exactly one year after Google's initial Gemini launch. The new release offers enhanced multimodal capabilities like native image and audio output, real-time tool use, and advanced reasoning to enable agentic experiences, such as acting as a universal assistant or research companion. VentureBeat reports: During a recent press conference, Tulsee Doshi, director of product management for Gemini, outlined the system's enhanced capabilities while demonstrating real-time image generation and multilingual conversations. "Gemini 2.0 brings enhanced performance and new capabilities like native image and multilingual audio generation," Doshi explained. "It also has native intelligent tool use, which means that it can directly access Google products like search or even execute code."
The initial release centers on Gemini 2.0 Flash, an experimental version that Google claims operates at twice the speed of its predecessor while surpassing the capabilities of more powerful models. This represents a significant technical achievement, as previous speed improvements typically came at the cost of reduced functionality. Perhaps most significantly, Google introduced three prototype AI agents built on Gemini 2.0's architecture that demonstrate the company's vision for AI's future. Project Astra, an updated universal AI assistant, showcased its ability to maintain complex conversations across multiple languages while accessing Google tools and maintaining contextual memory of previous interactions. [...]
For developers and enterprise customers, Google introduced Project Mariner and Jules, two specialized AI agents designed to automate complex technical tasks. Project Mariner, demonstrated as a Chrome extension, achieved an impressive 83.5% success rate on the WebVoyager benchmark for real-world web tasks -- a significant improvement over previous attempts at autonomous web navigation. Supporting these advances is Trillium, Google's sixth-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which becomes generally available to cloud customers today. The custom AI accelerator represents a massive investment in computational infrastructure, with Google deploying over 100,000 Trillium chips in a single network fabric.
The initial release centers on Gemini 2.0 Flash, an experimental version that Google claims operates at twice the speed of its predecessor while surpassing the capabilities of more powerful models. This represents a significant technical achievement, as previous speed improvements typically came at the cost of reduced functionality. Perhaps most significantly, Google introduced three prototype AI agents built on Gemini 2.0's architecture that demonstrate the company's vision for AI's future. Project Astra, an updated universal AI assistant, showcased its ability to maintain complex conversations across multiple languages while accessing Google tools and maintaining contextual memory of previous interactions. [...]
For developers and enterprise customers, Google introduced Project Mariner and Jules, two specialized AI agents designed to automate complex technical tasks. Project Mariner, demonstrated as a Chrome extension, achieved an impressive 83.5% success rate on the WebVoyager benchmark for real-world web tasks -- a significant improvement over previous attempts at autonomous web navigation. Supporting these advances is Trillium, Google's sixth-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which becomes generally available to cloud customers today. The custom AI accelerator represents a massive investment in computational infrastructure, with Google deploying over 100,000 Trillium chips in a single network fabric.
Just for fun ... (Score:3)
I think all Gemini versions should be evenly divisible by 2.
I have not asked for it.. (Score:3)
...yet it's still popping up on my phone regularly.
I have no use for it. I do not want it. I cannot deactivate nor uninstall it.
Re: (Score:2)
It was pretty easy to disable all of the Apple Intelligence stuff once I was done playing with it.
I'd imagine Android has some kind of similar toggles hidden deep in the bowels of the Settings app.
I think this announcement is more about their full blown multi-model ChatGPT-like product [google.com] than the phone assistant, though.
Re: (Score:3)
Go o the Google settings (from the home app, swipe left then upper right corner, settings), Google assistant, scroll down to Digital assistants from Google, and there you have two options, Gemini or Google assistant.
More suckerbait (Score:1)
Why would anybody doubt there's an excellent chance Google will do again what it has done many times before: shut this project down with little notice and leave anybody foolish enough to have come to rely on it high and dry?
Re: (Score:3)
While "killed by Google" https://killedbygoogle.com/ [killedbygoogle.com] is a thing, I'd say that Google Search is more likely to be the next thing "killed" than Gemini. Copilot makes even Bing Search usable, and is quickly swallowing it up. There is a huge race going on to capture people's attention with the various AI platforms. If Google doesn't catch up, it will be left behind. They know that, and Gemini (unlike many of the other products "killed") is Google's #1 focus of attention.
Re: (Score:2)
Excellent point. I hadn't thought of it that way.
Re: (Score:1)
Extrapolating from Russian personnel and equipment losses and Russian gains in terrain, how much territory will Russia hold when it runs out of people to throw into the fight?
would have been utterly impossible via a traditional search engine but Bing's Deep Search understood exactly what I was asking and returned highly relevant results. In fact the ability to enter long
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, Bing has improved over the years. But their results are still not as relevant as what you get from Google
This query, for example: "us life expectancy compared to other countries"
Google's top result is to an article with a nice graph comparing the US to other similar countries. Bing lists news about life expectancy, and an page from Ars Technica about how people spend extra years, and other things related to life expectancy, but you have to drop to the 9th link to find an actual comparison.
What makes Go
If only you could turn it off (Score:2)
Surprisingly accurate (Score:3)
I got a message today on my phone that I could switch to Gemini and I went ahead and did it. Then I asked it a bunch of questions and the answers were mostly spot-on, and sometimes amazingly correct. It was all stuff you could find similar answers to on the internet if you asked a search engine the right questions and looked at a few links. But I didn't have to do that.
I don't usually fool with the phone-based assistants but I'm going to try it more often.
Re: Surprisingly accurate (Score:2)
Twice as fast means twice as woke? (Score:2)
Just kidding! (Maybe.)