Google announces Gemini 3 as battle with OpenAI intensifies
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Google is debuting its latest artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3, as the search giant races to keep pace with ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
The new AI model will allow users to get better answers to more complex questions, “so you get what you need with less prompting,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in one of several blog posts Google published Tuesday.
Gemini 3 will be integrated into the Gemini app, Google’s AI search products AI Mode and AI Overviews, as well as its enterprise products. The rollout begins Tuesday for select subscribers and will go out more broadly in the coming weeks.
The announcement comes about eight months after Google introduced Gemini 2.5 and 11 months after Gemini 2.0. OpenAI, which kicked off the generative AI boom in late 2022 with the public launch of ChatGPT, introduced GPT-5 in August.
“It’s amazing to think that in just two years, Al has evolved from simply reading text and images to reading the room,” Pichai wrote in one of Tuesday’s posts. “Starting today, we’re shipping Gemini at the scale of Google.”
The Gemini app now has 650 million monthly active users and AI Overviews has 2 billion monthly users, the company said. OpenAI said in August that ChatGPT hit 700 million weekly users.
Pichai added that the newest model is “built to grasp depth and nuance,” and said Gemini 3 is also “much better at figuring out the context and intent behind your request, so you get what you need with less prompting.” Google’s other AI models may still be used for simpler tasks, the company said.
Alphabet and its megacap rivals are spending heavily to build out the infrastructure for AI development and to rapidly create more services for consumers and businesses. In their earnings reports last month, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon each lifted their guidance for capital expenditures, and collectively expect that number to reach more than $380 billion this year.
Google said AI responses powered by Gemini 3 will be “trading cliché and flattery for genuine insight — telling you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear,” according to a statement from Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google’s AI unit DeepMind. Industry critics have said today’s AI chatbots are too sycophantic.
Last week, OpenAI issued two updates to GPT-5. One is “warmer, more intelligent, and better at following your instructions,” the company said, and the other is “faster on simple tasks, more persistent on complex ones.”
Google also announced a new agent platform called “Google Antigravity,” which lets developers code “at a higher, task-oriented level.”
Gemini 3 is the company’s “best vibe coding model ever,” Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Labs and Gemini, told reporters in a briefing. Vibe coding refers to a rapidly emerging market of tools that allow software developers to generate code with prompts.
Google said the new model will enable “generative interfaces,” providing certain answers in a way that resembles a digital magazine. As an example, the company asked Gemini to “explain the Van Gogh Gallery with life context for each piece.” The result was a colorful, image-based explanation for each painting.
Within AI Mode, Gemini 3 will first be available to paid subscribers. It will be able to analyze a question and create a layout with visual elements such as images, tables and grids. Google said it can make a custom-built interactive loan calculator or an interactive simulation about a complicated physics problem.
Developers will be able to access the Gemini API and businesses will be able to integrate it through Vertex AI, the Google cloud service designed for building, deploying and managing AI models.
For corporate customers, Gemini 3 can do things like create employee onboarding and trainings, more accurately analyze videos and factory floor images, and handle procurement, the company said.
A Tesla Inc. robotaxi on Oltorf Street in Austin, Texas, on June 22, 2025.
Tim Goessman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla has obtained a permit to operate a ride-hailing service in Arizona, the state’s department of transportation said.
The electric vehicle company applied for a “transportation network company” permit on Nov. 13, and was approved on Monday, ADOT said in an emailed statement. Additional permits will be required before Tesla can operate a robotaxi service in Arizona.
In July, Tesla applied to conduct autonomous vehicle testing and operations in Phoenix, with and without human safety drivers on board. A month earlier, Tesla started a robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas, with safety valets and remote operators. Tesla also operates a more traditional car service in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tesla plans to take human safety drivers out of its cars in Austin before the end of this year. The company is aiming to operate a commercial robotaxi service in Phoenix and several other U.S. cities before the end of 2026.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website, Tesla cars equipped with automated driving systems were involved in seven reported collisions following the launch of the company’s pilot in Texas.
Competitors including Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China are way ahead in the nascent robotaxi ride-hailing market. In the Phoenix area, Waymo operates a sizable commercial business, with at least 400 autonomous vehicles, the company previously told CNBC. In May, Waymo said it had surpassed 10 million driverless trips served to riders across the U.S.
Baidu said in an earnings update on Tuesday that its Apollo Go service “provided 3.1 million fully driverless operational rides in the third quarter of 2025,” representing year-over-year growth of 212%.
Musk has been promising that Tesla will “solve” autonomy for years without reaching its goals. The world’s richest person has continued with the lofty pronouncements.
At the company’s 2025 shareholder meeting earlier this month, Musk said the “killer app” for self-driving technology is when people can “text and drive,” or “sleep and drive.”
“Before we allow the car to be driven without paying attention, we need to make sure it’s very safe,” Musk said. “We’re on the cusp of that. I know I’ve said that a few times. We really are at this point.”
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