Google releases the first of its Gemini 2.0 AI models
Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Google released the first version of its Gemini 2.0 family of artificial intelligence models on Wednesday.
Gemini 2.0 Flash, as the model is called, is available in a chat version for users globally while an experimental multimodal version of the model, with text-to-speech and image generation features, is available to developers.
“If Gemini 1.0 was about organizing and understanding information, Gemini 2.0 is about making it much more useful,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement.
Google’s latest large language model outperforms its predecessors in the majority of user request areas, such as code generation and the ability to provide factually correct responses from user requests. One area where it is inferior to Gemini 1.5 Pro is when it comes to evaluating longer contexts.
To access the chat-optimized version of the experimental Flash 2.0, Gemini users can select it in the model drop-down menu on desktop and mobile web. It will be available on the Gemini mobile app soon, the company said.
The multimodal version of Gemini Flash 2.0 will be available via the Google’s AI Studio and Vertex AI developer platforms.
General availability of Gemini 2.0 Flash’s multimodal version will come in January, along with more Gemini 2.0 model sizes, Google said Wednesday. The company said it also plans to expand Gemini 2.0 to more Google products in early 2025.
Gemini 2.0 represents Google’s latest efforts in the tech industry’s increasingly competitive AI race. Google is competing against the likes of rivals like tech giants Microsoft and Meta and startups like OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, Perplexity and Anthropic, which makes Claude.
Along with the release of the new Flash model are other research prototypes aimed at developing more “agentic” AI models and experiences. Agentic models, according to the company, “can understand more about the world around you, think multiple steps ahead, and take action on your behalf, with your supervision.”
Last week, in a conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Pichai challenged Microsoft’s AI advancement, saying he’d “love to do a side-by-side comparison” of the two companies’ models “any day, any time.”
Technology
Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’
Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.
Figure AI
Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”
Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”
The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”
The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.
Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.
The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.
Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.
Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.
The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.
Read the filing here:
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