Gemini news

Google said on Nov. 11 (Nov. 12 Japan time) on its official X account that developers can now connect sandboxes (isolated execution environments) they set up themselves to Managed Agents, the AI agent feature of the Gemini API. Tools that had run in Linux sandboxes provided by Google can now run on a company's own computing infrastructure. The connection uses outbound HTTPS from the open-source Gemini API CLI, so no inbound firewall ports are needed. The feature is in preview, and Google says its specifications may change. The official documentation does not mention pricing for computing resources in self-hosted environments.

Google is moving to add "xhigh" to the setting that controls reasoning depth (thinking level) in its developer-facing Gemini API, according to changes in its official SDKs (software development kits). The values are ordered minimal, low, medium, high and xhigh, and xhigh appears to be a level above "high," the deepest so far. The addition also appeared in release notes for the official Python, JavaScript and Java SDKs dated Nov. 10. Google has not announced it on its official blog or official X accounts, so the information remains an unannounced leak. Supported models, pricing and whether the value can actually be called have not been disclosed.

Google said on Nov. 9 that developers can now build apps using its mapping service "Google Maps Platform" inside "Google AI Studio," its service for developers who build apps with AI. When a user describes the app they want in text, AI Studio handles the map setup and prepares the API key, and an interactive map appears in the preview. The prototyping "Maps Demo Key" can be used without a credit card but is limited to 100 calls per API per day, and some APIs are excluded. Production use or more calls require linking a Google Cloud billing account, with standard charges applying. The announcement did not state pricing amounts.

Google has released "Gemini Decision" (gemini-decision-1), a model that returns only probabilities for yes/no judgments, choices among options and graded scoring, along with its dedicated "Decisions API." The Gemini API changelog marks it "Released" in an entry dated Nov. 11, and it is also listed in the official model list. Because it does not generate text, output tokens are always zero; on the paid tier it costs $0.10 per million input tokens, and it is free on the free tier. A single request can judge up to 1,000 questions, with an input limit of 262,144 tokens. It is offered only on v1beta of the Gemini Developer API. Proposed changes to four official SDKs found the previous day were also all merged early on Nov. 12 Japan time.

Google and Adobe on Nov. 10 U.S. time announced an expanded partnership at Adobe's "Adobe MAX" event. Adobe's creative and productivity tools will extend into Google products, and Google's AI models into Adobe's apps. The PDF editor "Acrobat" will become available in Google Workspace, with an entry point that opens it from file previews in Google Drive and Gmail. Acrobat and other tools will be added to Adobe's connectors in Gemini and Gemini Enterprise, and Adobe's tools will also come to Google Search's "AI Mode." Google's latest image and video models will be used in Firefly, Photoshop, Premiere and Adobe Express, and Gemini models in Acrobat's AI features. Neither company gave specific launch dates, and an image model for Photoshop with Google DeepMind is at the exploration stage.

Google DeepMind, Google's research division, on Nov. 10 (Nov. 11 Japan time) announced "Gemini Robotics 2.5," an AI model that controls robots. The model turns camera images and spoken or written instructions into robot actions, and the company said that in tests on more than 200 kinds of tasks, its success rates were 30% to 100% higher than previous baselines depending on the task, and it finished tasks 20% to 30% faster. In a trial on a Mercedes-Benz production line, Apptronik's humanoid robot achieved a 96% success rate sorting car parts. All figures are the company's own measurements, with no third-party evaluation. It is being offered first to robotics partners, and no API or pricing has been disclosed.

Google on Nov. 10 (Nov. 11 Japan time) made its top model, "Gemini 4 Carbon," generally available. When it was announced in October, it was limited to cyber defense organizations. The API is for paying developers and businesses, with introductory pricing of $2 for input and $10 for output per million tokens through Nov. 30, rising to $4 for input and $20 for output from Dec. 1. Subscribers to the top plan, Google AI Ultra, will get it gradually in the Gemini app, AI Mode in Search and Antigravity.

Google is moving to add a "Decisions API" to its developer-facing "Gemini API" that returns only the answers to selection and judgment questions. On Nov. 11, proposed changes (pull requests) adding `client.decisions.create` were posted to the GitHub repositories of 4 official SDKs (software development kits). There are 3 question types: noul, which asks whether something is true or false; choice, which picks one option from a list; and score, which rates on a scale. The proposed changes have not been merged, Google has not announced the feature, and it does not appear in the official documentation. Pricing, supported models and timing are unknown.

Google DeepMind on Nov. 10 (Nov. 11 Japan time) released "MKA," a new benchmark developed with U.S.-based Artificial Analysis that tests AI agents on reading visually complex files such as drawings and medical images and producing deliverables. On 200 tasks created by experts in 10 industries, Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.2 ranked first (57%) and Google's Gemini 4 Carbon second (54%). By Artificial Analysis' calculation, the cost per task was $31.97 for Fable versus $6.29 for Carbon, a gap the company describes as more than 5 times. Google, by its own calculation, claims one-sixth. The differences among the top three are not statistically distinguishable.

An unannounced setting, "proactiveVideo," has been found in the public specification of Google's "Gemini API" for developers. The detection bot @aitrackerbot reported it on Nov. 6 (Nov. 7 Japan time), and ORIENS confirmed the field and its description in the public specification. The description says generation may start for each image received and that costs can increase significantly. Google has not announced it, and it does not appear in the official documentation or SDKs. ORIENS has not tested how it works, and the supported models, pricing and release timing are unknown.

Google on Nov. 5 announced "Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash," a new version of its video generation AI, and made it generally available in the Gemini API and Google Cloud. It extends the video that can be created in a single generation from 10 seconds to 15 seconds and cuts the price for 720p from about $0.10 to $0.07 per second. On the same day, a detection bot posted that the model had appeared in AI Studio, but the bot's figures of a 131,072-token context and a 65,536-token maximum output could not be confirmed in official materials and remain unverified. On Dec. 3, API requests to the previous 1.1 will be switched to 1.2.

Reports spread on X on Nov. 5 that "Gemini 4 Flash," an unannounced Google model, was being A/B tested under the code name "Hydrogen" in the developer environment "Google AI Studio" and on the comparison site "Arena." The reports came from posts by the leaker @Haleeeemahh and others, and none of them offered evidence for the name, its link to Hydrogen or the testing. Google has made no announcement, and the model was not in the official model list as of that day.

Google on Oct. 30 made "computer use," a developer feature in which AI looks at the screen and clicks and types, generally available in the Gemini API. General availability came 388 days after the first preview in October 2025, with no breaking changes from the preview. It can be used to operate browsers, Android smartphones and computers, with no extra fee beyond the model's standard token pricing. Pricing for the recommended "Gemini 3.8 Flash" rises from $0.75 to $1.50 for input in January 2027. On screen-control evaluations, Anthropic's "Claude Opus 5.5" ranks first even in the table Google published.

Google's AI app "Gemini" on Oct. 29 began letting users share their "avatar," a digital double that records their face and voice, with friends. People it is shared with can call up the avatar in their prompts to make it appear in images and videos. The company said it keeps the person and voice consistent. Users can change who it is shared with and for how long at any time. It is unclear whether the feature is available in Japan; it is not available in Europe or Britain and supports only English.

Google on Oct. 29 made it possible to create documents, PDFs, slides, spreadsheets and code files in its AI app "Gemini," and to edit them while viewing them in the chat. Users can expand a file to full screen and rewrite it themselves, or select part of it and have the AI revise it. The feature is available to all users in all languages Gemini supports. However, everything except PDFs works only in the web version.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, on Oct. 28 reported results for the July-September quarter of 2026. Revenue rose 25% from a year earlier to $127.6 billion, and its cloud business, Google Cloud, more than doubled, rising 103% to $30.7 billion. The volume processed by the APIs for its in-house AI models reached about 32 billion tokens per minute, four times the level of a year earlier. Capital spending reached $51.4 billion in July-September, and the company said it expects it to exceed $300 billion in 2027.

The app for Google's AI "Gemini" said on X on Oct. 27 that users can find out whether an image, video or audio file was made with Google's AI by providing the file and asking whether it was made with AI. It looks for "SynthID," an invisible mark Google embeds in the output of its own AI. It can identify only content made with Google's AI and cannot judge content made with other companies' AI.

Google on Oct. 27 unveiled "Genie 4," an AI that instantly creates 3D worlds users can walk around and interact with from text or images. Unlike the previous generation, it also generates ambient sound, music and dialogue at the same time. The AI model "Gemini" breaks goals into steps and advances events in the world in order. It is available first to a limited group of testers, with early access through the paid Google AI Ultra plan and the Gemini API coming "soon." Google also acknowledged weaknesses, such as objects' shapes and positions drifting when it runs for a long time.

Google on Oct. 26 released "Gemini API CLI," a command-line tool for calling the Gemini API from AI agents and scripts, as an open-source beta. Agents from other companies, such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, can request image, video, speech and music generation, or the reading of PDFs and videos, with a one-line command. It is separate from "Gemini CLI," the interactive coding agent, and is not its successor. Because it is in beta, compatibility may break even in minor version updates.

A rumor spread on Oct. 25 that Google's next lightweight model, "Gemini 4 Flash," will be released as a "router" that assigns the model to use depending on the query. The name "gemini-3.8-flash-router" has been present for several days in internal data of "Antigravity," the company's AI coding tool, according to the rumor. There are also reports that it is being tested with some users. All of this comes from posts by individuals, and Google has not made any announcement.

Google on Oct. 22 enabled the app of its conversational AI "Gemini" to draw on searches and saved places in Google Maps. Combining them with events in Google Calendar, it suggests places such as shops users can stop by in their free time. Users choose whether to connect the services themselves, and the connection is off by default. It is available to personal accounts of users 18 and older and cannot be used with work or school accounts. Google has not released figures showing the accuracy of its suggestions.

Google is developing "Gemini Omni 1.5," the next version of its video generation AI, which will extend the length of video that can be made in one go from the current 10 seconds to 15 seconds, an X account that reports rumors about new models posted on Oct. 18. Google has not announced it, and other specifications and the release timing are unknown. The current "Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash" was released on Aug. 27 and makes videos of up to 10 seconds each, which can be extended to a total of 40 seconds with the extension feature.

Google on Oct. 16 (Oct. 17 Japan time) made its AI model "Gemini 4 Argon" available in the Build and Playground sections of its development environment "Google AI Studio" to subscribers of "Google AI Pro," its $19.99-a-month individual plan. When the model became generally available on Oct. 13, AI Studio access was limited to subscribers of the $99.99-a-month "Ultra" plan and pay-as-you-go API users. However, Google has not disclosed how much Pro subscribers can use, and usage beyond the allowance is charged at API rates. Those rates rise to $4 for input and $20 for output in December. On Oct. 28, Google also announced its successor, "Gemini 4 Carbon."

The X account @Haleeeemahh posted on Oct. 31 that "Carbon-H," seen as a new version of Google's top model Gemini 4 Carbon, was appearing under the name "Argon 4" on Arena, a site that compares AI models anonymously. Testers say it is faster than the earlier version and better at 3D rendering. Google has not commented, and Carbon is still offered only to organizations on the cyber defense side.

U.S.-based Mercor announced on Oct. 30 that Google's top model, Gemini 4 Carbon, ranked first on "APEX-Agents," an evaluation that has AI carry out the real work of investment banking, consulting and law. It completed 84.2% of tasks, and second place went to Google's Gemini 4 Argon (82.4%). However, the gap between the two falls within the margin of error Mercor gives, and on another third-party evaluation of the same kind of work, Carbon placed only fourth.

U.S. research firm SemiAnalysis on Nov. 1 released "GDPx," a new benchmark that measures how far AI can independently complete long tasks performed by professionals. Across 206 tasks in 11 domains, even the top-ranked model, Anthropic's "Claude Opus 5.5," scored only 12.0%. Google's "Gemini 4 Carbon" placed second at 10.9%, at a cost of $16.29 per task, about a third of Opus's $51.41. Excluding three domains heavily affected by safety features, OpenAI's "GPT-6 Astra" takes the top spot.

Google on Oct. 30 (Oct. 31 Japan time) released the October edition of "Gemini Drops," a roundup of new features in its conversational AI app "Gemini." The 11 features include a Windows app, "skills" that save and recall frequently used instructions, and launching the development environment "Antigravity" from the Mac app, and 7 of them are available in Japan. Most had already been announced individually in September and October, and ChatGPT and Claude had previously offered the Windows app's shortcut and skills. The Gemini app has surpassed 1 billion monthly users.

Google on Oct. 28 announced Gemini 4 Carbon, its new top-end model. It took first place in an overall evaluation, but the first to get access are limited to organizations defending against cyberattacks. Following Anthropic and OpenAI, all three major U.S. companies have now adopted the same release approach.