Google’s Gemini 2.0 AI model reportedly launching in December. Here’s what to expect

After reports of OpenAI planning to launch its flagship AI model in December, there is now a possibility that Google may be planning to launch the latest version of Gemini in the same month.  Meanwhile, Elon Musk's xAI, Anthropic, and Meta are also looking to launch their new frontier models soon. 

As per a report by The Verge, Google plans to widely release the Gemini 2.0 model in December. However, the new model isn't reportedly showing the performance gains that Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis was hoping. The report does suggest though that this is a trend that is happening across companies that are developing large models. 

For reference, Google had launched the Gemini 1.0 and Gemini 1.0 Pro language model via Bard AI (the previous name of Gemini). Meanwhile, Gemini 1.5 with expanded context window was launched in February. Google had also showcased its multimodal AI assistant Project Astra during I/O 2024 event but a confirmed timeline for the new model is yet to be confirmed. 

Project Astra is capable of answering user's queries in real time via text, audio or video inputs. In a demo video shared by Google, the new AI assistant can be seen conversing with the user and answering questions in real-time.