At a Google Cloud event on Thursday, Google announced the introduction of its Gemini AI into the agentic age. This new unified agent can not only answer questions but also perform tasks on the user’s behalf, all from a single interface.
Evolution of AI Tools
The announcement comes as AI tools evolve from mere conversational experiences to systems capable of taking ownership of assigned tasks. These tasks include generating code, scheduling meetings, booking appointments, and more. This shift follows the emergence of consumer-facing agents like Meta’s Muse and messaging-based agents such as Instinct. Additionally, the recent debut of ChatGPT’s Dots has further highlighted this trend.
Adoption and Focus on Businesses
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, emphasized that Gemini currently boasts over 1 billion monthly active users. He also noted that nearly 90% of Fortune 100 businesses utilize Gemini Enterprise in their operations. Given this corporate adoption, Google will initially focus on deploying the agent to businesses before expanding to consumer use. Pichai stated that this approach allows the company to tackle the “harder problems around security, scale, and performance” associated with launching such powerful agents.
Features of the New Agent
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, explained that the new agent can be assigned “objectives, not just instructions.” This capability enables it to plan work, utilize custom skills and tools, and connect to businesses’ internal systems to achieve its goals. By default, the AI selects the best model for task completion, but users can also choose models from third parties, starting with Anthropic’s Claude models. Google plans to expand the model picker to include open-source and other private models in the future.
