Google has unfurled Gemini 2.0, its latest generative artificial intelligence (AI) model with a raft of prototype AI agents designed to perform tasks such as writing code and planning holidays.
Underscoring the levity of Gemini 2.0, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said it represents what he calls AI’s “agentic era,” forming a foundational piece for the tech giant’s grand vision of creating a universal assistant.
Wednesday’s announcement — which came in the midst of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Christmas-themed event and Apple Inc.’s release of Apple Intelligence, which brings ChatGPT integration to iOS 18.2 on iPhones — illustrates the high stakes in the race amid Big Tech for AI supremacy.
Project Mariner, a research prototype built with Gemini 2.0, can shop online, pay parking tickets and build spreadsheets autonomously, marking a seismic step in creating a universal assistant, according to a blog post on Google DeepMind.
Project Mariner, formerly known as “Project Jarvis,” signals the most significant update to web browsing since its inception in 1990. More importantly, it will likely set the foundation for Google’s objective of a universal AI assistant that can carry out everyday tasks.
“It’s still early, but Project Mariner shows that it’s becoming technically possible to navigate within a browser, even though it’s not always accurate and slow to complete tasks today, which will improve rapidly over time,” Google DeepMind executives wrote in the post.
Google’s agentic AI bid is the most recent in a flurry of announcements the past few months from the likes of Microsoft Corp., ServiceNow Inc., Salesforce Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Adobe Inc. and others.
“AI agents like Mariner promise to take the next step after chatbots — doing work on behalf of human users, rather than just providing answers,” Damian Rollison, director of market insights at SOCi, said in an email. “Ideally, you’d want an AI agent to be able to book your flight, hotel and rental car for you, not just look up travel info, or compile relevant statistics into a report or slide deck to save you the trouble.”
“These are tasks that, theoretically, don’t require a human to do the busywork. But it’s notable that Mariner is not yet publicly available and that Google acknowledges the mistakes it can still make,” Rollison said. “The state of the AI arms race being what it is, the company probably feels it must rush these products out in order to stay competitive, but their utility will only be proven by broad consumer adoption — in other words, they need to actually work.”
