google – Teknotum

Gemini hops on the persistent agent train, and makes a play for enterprise

Gemini agent can connect to just about anything, and uses MCP for what it can’t. (Picture: Google)

Google launched the Gemini agent today, a persistent cloud-based agent that does stuff for you across your workspace. It is joining Meta, Microsoft, Grok and OpenAI in what is becoming a busy space.

Google says nearly 80% of all Cloud customers use AI products and nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 use Gemini Enterprise.

So the sales pitch for the Gemini agent is that it is already hooked up to Google’s ecosystem, and knows a lot about you and your work and context.

That means Gemini understands your businesses from day one, «from pricing to product portfolios to departmental norms,» and «all the institutional knowledge that makes your company unique.»

As with other agent assistants, it gets to know you better the more you use it, and it is cloud-based — meaning you can access it from anywhere and it keeps working after you close your laptop.

Gemini agent can use the best underlying model for the task at hand, sometimes opting for a faster and cheaper one, other times choosing something stronger. It already works with the Gemini family and Anthropic’s Claude, and they are hoping to add «other leading private and open models in the future.»

They are initially optimizing the agent with a couple of very specific skills for data and ML engineers and general business users — and are specializing Gemini for financial services and legal workflows.

Read more: Google’s (long) presentation, launch post. The Verge, Reuters, and 9to5Google. Discussion r/GeminiAI.

Google delivers Gemini 4 Argon in limited release, nudging the frontier ahead

Argon does push the frontier a little, but benchmarks don’t point to a showstopper. (Picture: Google)

Their first fresh frontier model in nearly a year isn’t getting a public release just yet, it is being rolled out to «trusted cyber defenders» and government to test and harden its capabilities first.

The model is built for «complex, long-horizon workflows,» Google says, and is supposedly excels at «real-world software engineering and enterprise knowledge work.»

It is also good at cybersecurity, being able to find, validate and patch vulnerabilities, and the release to testers will be without cyber guardrails so they can test out these defenses.

Argon also slightly pushes the frontier ahead, scoring marginally better than GPT-6 Astra, Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1 in most benchmarks Google tested with, and is ahead by quite a bit on Arena.ai’s text benchmark, while coming in eighth on coding.

On the Artificial Analysis benchmark it scores a joint second behind Opus 5.5, shared with Fable 5.1 and Astra. It also hallucinates way less, at a rate of just 15% versus Fable’s 69%.

The real-world testing release is in order to protect against misuse, prompt injections, and misalignment, and to harden systems, Google says. They also say they will be monitoring Argon’s chain-of-thought throughout these «pivotal moments of increased capabilities while navigating alignment risks.» Google signed a voluntary safety agreement between industry and the White House just yesterday.

There seems no timeline for general release, but Google says it will roll out to the API and AI Ultra subscribers first, and Argon is available now to members of the Fairwind program. It costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million out.

Read more: Google’s presentation. CNBC, Ars Technica, and VentureBeat. Discussion on Hacker News and r/Singularity.

Anthropic, Google and OpenAI are discussing an industry standards body

The standards body would be independent and technical, and provide guidance for frontier labs. (Picture: generated)

With OpenAI’s Sam Altman’s post on X yesterday, saying that he would welcome «a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI,» it seems work is already underway for a less formal version of an industry standards body involving the frontier labs, sources are telling CNN and The Information.

The discussions «are ongoing» and are happening «with or without» the Trump administration, CNN says.

An industry standards body seems framed around Google’s Chief Scientist Demis Hassabis’ proposal from July this year, ideas that were referenced in Amodei’s «pacing» essay just a few days ago.

This body would be loosely based on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority which is a self-regulatory organization for brokerages and exchanges governed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to Hassabis, it would have an independent board and be staffed with «leading technical experts and open source representatives,» and be charged with «developing assessment protocols» for frontier AI. Labs would then submit their models for pre-release evaluation.

Sam Altman said in his X post yesterday that «we think shared standards for misalignment, monitoring, and safety will lead to better outcomes,» and that the industry must take independent steps toward regulation as «we do not believe we need to wait for an anti-trust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence.»

«We look forward to collaborating with our colleagues across the industry to formulate the best version of these,» Altman wrote, in the most direct support of such an organization outside of Google and Anthropic yet.

Read more: CNN and The Information. Hassabis’ X post, Altman’s X posts. Discussion on Digg.

Amodei calls for global pacing of AI; Altman, Musk, Hassabis all agree

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy, 3,600 word essay Saturday on the importance of slowing down ever more capable AI rollouts, and is already committing to the first part of his three-part plan.

Industry insiders seem to all agree that the Hugging Face incident and the rapid advances toward self-improvement have turned up some huge red flags.

Amodei reckons a more capable model with agent swarms and the same alignment problems could bring down the internet in 6-12 months, causing billions of dollars of damage, while self-improving AIs risk losing human control of their accellarating development.

Continue reading “Amodei calls for global pacing of AI; Altman, Musk, Hassabis all agree”

Google releases Gemini 3.8 Flash & Cyber — inching towards the frontier

Especially the Cyber version outpaces the frontiers at a fraction of the cost. (Picture: Google/generated)

Less than three weeks after releasing Gemini 3.7 Flash, its successor is already here. 3.8 Flash excels at analytical legal and financial tasks in benchmarks, outperforming the bigger frontier models.

It slots in with 59 points on Artificial Analysis, between GLM-5.3 and DeepSeek V4, and they note it is fairly cheap ($0.75/1M in/$3.75 out), fast and verbose.

3.8 Flash uses more tokens and does more work even on simple queries than 3.7-Flash, so as a stopgap, 3.7 will continue to be available on the Gemini app and API.

Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber is the star of this release, however, and shows performance slightly beating the biggest frontier models on CyberGym at a much lower cost.

It is currently used in protecting Google’s own code, where it doesn’t just discover vulnerabilities, it also helps to write the patches for the solution.

Gemini 3.8 Flash is available today for most of the Gemini ecosystem to paying subscribers. The Cyber variant is only available to «trusted defenders.»

Read more: Google’s presentation The Verge, Ars Technica, and 9to5Google. Discussion on Hacker News and r/Singularity.

Google debuts «workhorse model» Gemini 3.7 Flash, just weeks after 3.6

Gemini’s latest «workhorse model» does well in coding and web dev, but is not on the frontier. (Picture: Google/generated)

After a management shakeup and worries over coding capabilities, Google is out with a new, fast mid-tier model that looks quite capable.

Gemini 3.7 Flash specifically addresses coding («strong gains»), web development («generates more functional layouts») and knowledge work («significantly outperforms 3.6 Flash»).

On Google’s selected benchmarks, it beats Claude Sonnet 5 (not to be confused with the more capable Opus 5) more often than not, goes toe to toe with GPT-5.6 Terra, and handily beats the previous generation, sometimes by a lot.

The Artificial Analysis index puts it just ahead of yesterday’s DeepSeek V4 Pro but behind Grok 4.6 and Muse Spark 1.2 and well below the larger frontier models.

Pricing is also favorable at $0.75/1M input tokens and $3.75/1M out as an «introductory price» lasting out the year, returning to $1.50 in and $7.50 out in 2027.

It is available as a «workhorse model» in Google’s developer tools, the API, enterprise platform and in Spark for Pro and Ultra subscribers in «supported countries,» meaning that the Spark agent isn’t available in Europe.

Read more: Google’s announcement, X post. Writeups on Axios, Ars Technica, and 9to5Google. Discussion on Hacker News and r/Singularity.

Google’s Gemini hits 1 billion monthly active users in apps and on the web

Gemini’s billion users only counts the ones using the app, not the myriad of connected services. (Picture: Google/generated)

Sundar Pichai just announced the new milestone, up from 950 million in July and 450 million a year before that. It’s the fastest growing Google service ever, and joins a host of 14 products crossing this line.

Gemini has grown steadily since 2025, according to web statistics service SimilarWeb, and now holds a 26.8% market share of web traffic to AI services, compared to ChatGPT’s 54.8% and Claude’s 9.7%.

On the occasion, Google’s Gemini VP Josh Woodward shared some usage tidbits, saying that 63% of interactions are from people using voice to talk to Gemini, and that 1 in 5 users use live camera feeds and screen sharing.

Gemini also generates over 150 million images every day, used more by businesses for marketing than for creating funny memes. Uploading attachments seems very popular by students, who do it 38% of the time.

Gemini is also plastered all over Google’s products and services in Workspaces, Google Search and all across Android. On Android, it can automate over 40 apps, which the EU is looking into, and they disclosed in 2025 that AI Overviews have over 2 billion monthly users. This headline number is however limited to the Gemini app and web service exclusively.

For comparison, OpenAI likely passed one billion weekly users in June 2026.

Read more: Sundar Pichai’s X post, Josh Woodward’s tidbits. Writeups on 9to5Google, The Verge, and Ars Technica.

1,134 employees and chiefs of top labs sign petition to «pace the frontier»

The frontier labs think we need more time to develop laws and systems before AI begins improving on itself. (Picture generated)

— AI could help create a dramatically better future, but that outcome is not guaranteed, the petition ominously opens, before warning that leading frontier labs are «close to automating AI research.»

That would radically speed up development of frontier models, but it could also «accelerate beyond our ability to understand and control the resulting systems.»

The petition is signed by top names, including Anthropic boss Dario Amodei, followed by chief scientists from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Google DeepMind along with over 1,100 other employees from frontier labs. Even OpenAI’s Sam Altman is agreeing, though he doesn’t sign petitions, and official X accounts for Anthropic and OpenAI have posted in support.

The petition’s main point is that industry, government and the society at large needs more time to «address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight.»

Continue reading “1,134 employees and chiefs of top labs sign petition to «pace the frontier»”

Google user data: AI use hits 99% of occupations, but only 21% of tasks

Google finds most people use AI outside of work, and aren’t unlocking its full potential. (Picture: Adobe)

Google’s new AI usage study finds that AI has proliferated widely, but few (10%) are using it to automate tasks at work. Instead, it is mostly being used for collaboration and task assistance.

The ATLAS survey spans 15 million anonymized interactions with Google’s AI tools, used by around a billion people each month. It spans 150 countries, 140 languages, 800 occupations and 4,000 tasks.

The main point is that AI use at work is prevalent but «shallow,» meaning it is typically only used for 21% of tasks. It also finds that white-collar workers aren’t dominating AI like previously thought, with physical, manual and technical occupations showing strong use, using it for help with things like troubleshooting.

Home usage might be the biggest surprise of the survey, as over 86% of AI interactions happen «outside of work,» where people use it for researching purchases, help with appliances and tools, as well as navigating issues like taxes, licensing and fines, Google finds.

The ATLAS survey will be a long-term project for Google, they say, and will be used to track AI usage on an ongoing basis. «There are many more questions around AI and the economy where more work will be needed,» they write.

Read more: Google’s presentation, The research paper, Axios, and Fox Business.

Google attacks cost, efficiency and cyber with three new Gemini models

Gemini’s new cyber model is getting a limited release: (Picture: Google, GPT)

As Google reveals that Gemini has 950 million monthly users, they are releasing some new models. The long-awaited flagship Gemini 3.5 Pro is not one of them, as it has been postponed for performance reasons, particularly in coding capabilities.

The new models focus on cost and efficiency, particularly the Gemini 3.6 Flash, which reduces token use by 17% and as much as 65% in some benchmarks. It is also much less pricey, coming in at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 in output.

3.5 Flash-Lite is built for faster agents, improving on 3.0 Flash in some cases and ticking in at 350 output tokens per second. It is also competitively priced, at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50/M for output.

Finally, Google is launching their first cyber model. 3.5 Flash Cyber is made for finding security vulnerabilities. It can detect, validate and patch security issues «at scale,» Google says, and is offered at a much lower cost than «larger models.» It is only available to governments and «trusted partners» as a limited access pilot program, just like Anthropic’s Mythos and GPT Cyber.

Despite not launching a new top model, Google is reporting strong growth of it’s Gemini offerings, outgrowing every other business segment with 82%, and they say it is used by 90% of the Fortune 100 companies.

Read more: Google’s introduction, DeepMind on Cyber, Sundar Pichai’s X post. Writeups on 9to5Google and CNBC.

If Gemini can do it, other Android assistants should, too, the EU rules

ANdroid will be forced to open up to rival AI assistants in Europe, The Commission has ruled. (Picture: generated)

Under the Digital Markets Act of the European Union, the European Commission has ruled that Google must open its Android system to rival AI services.

After launching a consultation in April, this ruling is binding and considered EU law, and Google has almost precisely one year to implement the changes.

The changes are broad and reach across Android, from demanding that other assistants should be voice-activated like «Hey, Gemini» to giving other AIs broad system access to software, hardware and sensors on the phone.

Continue reading “If Gemini can do it, other Android assistants should, too, the EU rules”

German court holds Google liable for AI Overview responses

AI Overviews aren’t qoutes from websites, and are therefore original expressions, the court found. (Picture: Shutterstock)

In the first ruling on liability for AI search functions, the Regional Court of Munich held that the feature is an expression of Google itself, and it is therefore responsible for outputs that defame or spread false information, The Decoder reports.

The issue was two German publishers who were accused of fraudulent practices by AI Overviews that were not supported by the underlying links, and therefore counted as Google’s «own statements,» the court found.

The publishers sent a cease and desist letter to the search engine that got ignored, resulting in the lawsuit asking for Google to remove the statements, which was upheld.

The previous interpretation was that search engines merely quoted their sources before sending the user on, and full liability for this would ruin Google’s functionality.

AI Overviews, however, generate «independent, new, and substantive statements,» the court said, which are not necessarily supported by the underlying data — and are not needed for the search engine to function.

According to the NY Times, Google’s Gemini 3 model is inaccurate around 9% of the time and includes wrong links 56% of the time, resulting in millions of wrong answers every day, Ars Technica writes.

Read more: The Decoder, Ars Technica, and Engadget.

Installs of DuckDuckGo are soaring amid Google’s AI search push

DuckDuckGo has become popular with the anti-AI crowd. (Picture: generated)

Google has made it clear that they are no longer a search company, but an AI company — further expanding AI Mode, extending AI overviews, and changing the iconic search box. Some people aren’t having it.

One practical effect of this can be seen in downloads of alternative search engine DuckDuckGo, which have greatly increaesed in the last few weeks, TechCrunch writes.

From May 20 to May 25, just after Google unveiled a new search box, weekly installs went up 18.1%, peaking at 30% on May 25. It grew even stronger on iOS, peaking at 70% week on week in the same period.

— Google is force-feeding AI with no way to opt out, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg tells TechCrunch, — We want to be the place that puts users in charge and allows them to decide how much or how little AI they want.

The search engine does use some AI to filter out images, and offers an AI chat product at duck.ai, but is famously privacy-focused, doesn’t store a thing, and also provides the AI-free noai.duckduckgo.com.

Go read the full story at TechCrunch

Recapping Google I/O: New Gemini, video generator and search box

Google I/O produced a flurry of AI announcements, as expected, and since it’s hard to keep up with everything they launched, here is a small recap.

Read on for the news in short on the new Gemini, the Omni video model, new subscription plans, the Gemini Spark agent and the revamped search box…

Continue reading “Recapping Google I/O: New Gemini, video generator and search box”

Google reimagines the mouse pointer with AI-enabled commands

Commands are simple once the mouse knows where it is pointing. (Picture: Google)

The common mouse pointer hasn’t changed in half a century, Google says — so it has infused it with context-aware AI to let you simply speak to it.

The general idea is to have an AI system be aware of where or what you are pointing at, and then use the microphone on your computer to give simple commands without careful prompting.

This should allow for easier AI interactions like «show me directions» when looking at a building, or «book a table» while hovering over a restaurant.

This sort of pointer needs the OS or app to be context-aware, and there is no system like this yet. It is, however, rolling out in Gemini in Chrome «starting today,» and will roll out «soon» as Magic Pointer, a major feature of the freshly announced Googlebook.

It is also available to test in AI Studio, where you can use it to edit an image or find places on a map. Do note that the system uses your microphone.

Read more: Google’s blog, 9to5Google.