Search engine giant Google has discreetly delayed the launch of its next-generation AI model Gemini which was meant to go up against OpenAI’s highly popular chatbot, ChatGPT. According to two sources familiar with the matter, the launch has now been delayed to January 2024.
The Information reports that Google had originally planned a series of launch events for Gemini next week in California, New York, and Washington. However, the launch event was scrapped by company CEO Sundar Pichai once they learned that the AI was not able to handle some non-English queries, according to one of the two sources.
This keynote would have marked one of the most important product launches for Google in 2023. This is because Gemini has been described as the company’s most complex AI model to date, which Google had used immense computational resources for and had also put together large teams for it.
Gemini is recognized as the next step in the evolution of AI with multimodal capabilities, showcasing its aptitude for processing diverse types of data. It is claimed to have the capability to understand and produce text, images, and various other types of content, including websites, using a sketch or written description as input.
Despite not being accessible to the public at this time, Gemini is said to surpass OpenAI’s GPT-4 by a significant margin, utilizing considerably more computing power than its rival.
Sissie Hsiao, the VP for Bard and Google Assistant has previously said about Gemini: “I’ve seen some pretty amazing things. Like, I’m trying to bake a cake, draw me 3 pictures of the steps to how to ice a three-layer cake, and Gemini will actually create those images. These are completely novel pictures. These are not pictures from the internet. It’s able to speak in imagery with humans now, not just text.”
That being said, Google already has a ChatGPT rival called Bard, though it is unable to live up to the popularity or capabilities of GPT 4, but analysts believe that Gemini will be more than enough to rival OpenAI’s greatest offering.
January 2024 is no longer far, meaning Google will likely share official news about Gemini soon enough.