Google's Biggest AI Announcements (I Was There)

We are here, it's Google I.O, Logan Kilpatrick, from the DeepMine team, friend of the pod, been on the pod a few times, Logan by the end of this episode, what are people going to learn? We're going to hear about all of the new releases from Google that just happened in that, Google I.O. And also, specifically, we should deep dive on how to build new AI-agent-native products, which was sort of the threat of Google I.O. this year was Agents Agents Agents, which we talked in depth about everything that we launched, and what it means for builders and developers. Okay, cool. So, I mean, let's start off by, what was launch and what is it matter? Yeah, there's so much new stuff, and I want to get your reactions to this too, because I think you have a grounded perspective of sort of the technology. I think one of the highlights was Gemini 3.5 Flash. It's the best model we've ever shipped, and we've made available. Really sort of, if you look at the history of Flash, I think Flash started as sort of this smaller workhorse model that was really great for chat, and was sort of the, you know, very cheap to use, very cheap to run. And I think we've sort of Flash continues to evolve to meet the era of what people are actually trying to use the models for. And I think the era that we're in right now is people are trying to use the models to do agentic sort of long running tasks. And I think we want Flash to sort of be the workhorse model for the agent era for agentic long running tasks, for coding, for all that stuff. So you see a model, a Flash model that's like actually really great at coding, that's sort of competing with a bunch of our, our sort of ecosystem competitors with very large models, the Flash model is sort of pulling its weight. Yeah, how should people think about, you know, Flash 3.5 versus the competition? Yeah, I think it's probably like a more like, sonnet level model. I think opening eye with just mainline, GBT, and then GBT mini, sort of they don't, I feel like sonnet is not like a small model, if you will. It's obviously, it packs a bunch, and I think it's definitely smarter than the mini models. So I feel like it's, I think we're anchoring more on the sonnet level intelligence. So if folks are using that model and want to try Flash, please let us know and send us the feedback of how it stacks up. Yeah, and the reasoning, all the agentic tool used stuff is all incredible. So I think that was one of the launches that models available, actually for the first time, like, available to all the users in search, available across 900 million users in the Gemini app, available to developers in the API, so many other places. So I think it's like the most widely distributed model launch on day one that we've ever done, has a film set of challenges that we could talk in depth about. The other thread, which I think folks are very excited about, is Gemini Omni. So sort of this new model that we've created, actually sort of somewhat of a world model, I think is how Demis framed it when we announced it on stage yesterday, being able to take in any type of input and create any type of output. And I think to give context for folks like Google, you know, we had Vio and Vio was state of the art and sort of pushed the frontier for video generation. We had Nano Banana, which could do sort of image generation and editing. We have all these audio models that do TTS. We have a new Leary, a music model that's actually really, really capable. And the idea is, how do you fuse all of those models into a single thing, so that a, developers' lives are easier, be we don't need to train nine different models, and actually get this really interesting cross pollination of capabilities, so that the same model that can actually benefit from Gemini's world understanding and the ability to generate text can also make a video, can also edit a video. And you see these like really interesting things, and we saw this with Nano Banana, like what happens when you give world knowledge to an image generation and editing model, it's really interesting use cases, and we give feedback all the time about what that's unlocked for customers. And so I'm really excited to see Omni starting out in the Gemini app at YouTube and in Flow, and then very soon already we're kicking off a bunch of early access tests. Hopefully as soon as I get out of IO and get back to the office and get feedback from developers and sort of continue the iteration and bring it to developers in the API, so that folks can actually build products on top of Omni. Yeah, I mean, it's products, building products, but also like building content that can be seen, right? Yeah, for sure. One of the hardest parts about vibe coding or building any business is getting distribution to the thing, right? So when I was watching the Omni demo, and just seeing like how amazing it actually is, like what was going through my mind is like, okay, how can I make a commercial? How can I make an ad? You know, how could I create an Instagram account using this model? And I think what you're going to see is a lot of people generate millions of followers, generate millions of views every single month, if they know how to storytell well and use the model. I actually also think it, and what I would love to see, I don't know, we'll give some work to your editor team, make the intro of this video, have a bunch of, have a bunch of like crazy stuff happening, and you can actually like change the intro of the video. We did this for some of the podcasts that I was doing, actually with the Omni team. And that hopefully it'll create a bunch of new creators. I also think it is a fundamental accelerator for existing folks who are producing content, like editing video is hard. Like, yeah, I'm sure you have an amazing team that's doing really hard work. And like, there's not enough hours in the day, there's not enough editor time in hours and storage on SSDs in order to like do all the stuff that I think could be done. I think Omni will sort of fill this really interesting gap for like maybe the creator who you know wants to tell an interesting story that didn't have the means to go have a whole team sort of support them in telling that story. And I'm really excited to see that happen. And I've already been seeing a bunch of examples on X and other places that folks like starting to be able to tell that story and bring content to life in new ways and actually like repurpose existing content. So it's going to be crazy. And this is only the like the first iteration of the Omni model. This is the flash variance. So like it only gets better from here, which is really exciting. So I think we're going to see some really cool stuff throughout the rest of this year. And from an API perspective, like how do you see, you think people are going to like integrate with Omni in terms of the products they build? Yeah, I think there's so many like interesting creative suites. I think a lot of people will also just be doing what you describe, which is like doing content with it and using the Gemini App or Flow or YouTube in order to do so. But I really do think it's an example of like this video remixing editing capability is like not something people have built into products thus far. So it is going to open up a new category. And I think if you're building businesses and like want to help, you know, actually, if you want to build a business and help the next 1000, 100,000 million creators go and tell their story, I think there's a bunch of really unique opportunities because this is a fundamentally different way of interacting with video. Totally. Yeah, I mean, it reminds me like I remember when social media was coming up and social media agencies were just popping up, right? Yeah. There's sort of a similar opportunity right now where, you know, you can build an Omni agency and sort of deploy this first small businesses as an opportunity, right? Yeah. And there's so many ways to like make the, my takeaway from seeing this like on my own content was, it makes the content more engaging. Like you could like do all types of like goofy things that like don't actually dilute, you know, people are like the tongue and cheek thing is like the subway surfer engagement farming and videos because people don't have attention. I think there's actually like I'm as a consumer of content. I'm actually really hopeful that there'll be more people doing like the much more thoughtful version of that in a way that like you could actually only do with Omni or like a really, really advanced like the FX studio that was able to pull this stuff off. So I think we'll actually see that and I think it will like it's like move us away from this like slop sort of era into something that's like a little bit more tasteful. And I think that's maybe corollary to I think some of the narrative of like AI tools sort of just generating more bad stuff in the world. Omni actually might be a really cool tool to help people tell a story with a higher degree of taste than they've been able to. What wasn't launched today that you wish was launched today? I know it's a question that you probably don't like getting but one thing I'd like about you is you're not afraid of criticisms and I see you when I see ever see criticisms of you know any of the products, you're the first person in the replies to be like we're working on it, we're taking feedback. So any anything that you wish to see over the next coming months? Yeah well first of all I do love the feedback. I think actually I think folks look at sort of criticism in such an interesting way. I see it as like it actually makes my job easy. Yeah like if you come say you know hey we wish the models were able to do this thing or we wish the API was able to do this thing very easy to like go and take that feedback. The hard thing is actually trying to identify these things when people don't tell you what they actually want. So I love the feedback and I appreciate it. Please keep it coming. I think what I would love to see and what the team's actively working on is the other set of Gemini models. So we obviously we're launching 3.5 Flash. 3.5 Pro is in the works. It's cooking. There's many iterations and runs happening behind the scenes right now. I think I think we said we announced yesterday it'll be available early next month or hopefully sometime next month maybe not early next month. And so yeah I'm excited. It would be it would have been great to sort of bring the whole 3.5 model family out at the same time. But it is also fun because I think 3.5 Flash sets the bar high and I think we we continue to I describe it as like pulling the rabbit out of the hat. We continue to take the pro level intelligence and then some of the flash models and stick it in the flash model. And I was talking to Oriole and Jeff yesterday who are what some of the leads for Gemini who actually invented distillation which is the technique that allows us to take the pro level intelligence model and stick it into the flash model sort of every single time and it's just crazy that it. That it keeps working and it brings the cost of. It brings the cost of intelligence down which is really interesting even though like I I lots of feedback about like the cost of flash so far and the important thing actually is that the cost of intelligence goes down the model is like one implementation of the like skew capturing the cost of intelligence and I think folks it's sort of it's a lossy way of expressing the cost of intelligence. But I think net net cost of intelligence has gone down with flash which is really exciting. What else was launched that you know a founder someone who's trying to be more productive or make money on the internet to know about. I think 20 I mean obviously the open claw revolution that sort of like took the world by storm is exciting. It was an opportunity and actually you know I love the folks who are working on open clots and incredible open source project Peter's awesome. But actually for folks if you've tried that product experience before it's really tough like you really do need like you need to be a confident person who's like willing to take risk and let things but I think Gary Tan sort of described this as like you know it's a Ferrari but you have to also then be your own personal Ferrari mechanic and sort of make the tools work and so I mean I studied computer science at school and like same you know and I didn't feel great you know yeah love what the team is done and stuff like that but it I was kind of nervous like my heart rate was going up when I was like installing and doing things yeah yeah it's it's and you have to like take the leap of faith and so I think for people building stuff like that that is in itself an opportunity and so I think there's sort of two angles to this one inside the Gemini app we sort of launched our sort of flavor of this like always on 24 seven agent to sort of help you run your business or you know come up with your next idea and sort of it's rolling out to trusted testers this week and then next week it'll start rolling out to Gemini ultra customers which is exciting so I think you know or sending work throwing work over the fence and having an agent do it is the best thing and if you want to build experiences like that we just launched managed agents in the Gemini API so using the same harness that's actually power in the same model that's powering Gemini Spark in the in the Gemini app we also have that ability for developers to go and build those experiences themselves and I'm really excited about this like the friction to build agents historically and choosing a framework and all of this sort of like iteration loop that you have to do in order to like get quality good enough et cetera et cetera trying to shortcut that for people who want to build and just like not have to deal with the infrastructure not have to deal with any of the problems send a single API call I demoed this on stage yesterday doing like an AI radio show and I think we're calling like seven different models and doing all of this I didn't write any orchestration code I literally just like wrote skills and mark down and was able to have it sort of go and orchestrate the whole show so I think it also like even if you're not the most technical developer and you didn't study computer science and you're just using these tools off the shelf like managed agents in the Gemini API actually think hopefully we'll lower the barrier to entry for people who want to build agents I think MCPs are coming soon to that product I think we will have MCP support for it to do tool tool calling I think right now it is just like skills in order to start so you can just describe and it can do some of these things but yeah there's a whole this IO is sort of like step one of the managed agent story and there's like 50 other things that are on the road map that we need to land in order to make the experience rich and feature full and all that's coming I mean that was my big one big takeaway from being IO is you know I always thought of this time as the AI era and you guys have been saying it's the agentic era yes and a lot of the new products that I've been seeing that you have launched of last 24 hours has been agentic this agentic that can you just yeah I'm curious your thoughts on this agentic era and you know the person who's listening to this is an idea of person right so they're listening to this and like okay how can I use this in my business or create a new business do you have any requests for startups or any ideas given that we're now in the agentic era that we can be using Google products to go build yeah no it's a great question I think two things come to mind I think historically there was this like one-to-one correlation of you spending your time and actually an actual work happening and I think the the exciting thing for somebody who has ideas and wants to build stuff is like asynchronous agents agents running in the background fundamentally changes that dichotomy of like you don't doesn't require you actively in the driver's seat every moment that there's actually useful work happening and the important thing is like useful work I think we're all sort of I was having a separate conversation about sort of every three to six months this like expectation reset that you have to do with somebody building in the AI era I think a lot of people like tried I'm trying to think of auto GPT is one example like three years ago and that team I think at the time like did something really interesting but like it didn't really work to do anything useful it was like it was like really really cool and interesting demo and so I think a lot of us like myself included I was like okay we're you know agents are exciting it's the future the future was not there at that time and it feels like we we've really crossed the chasm and that future is right now so if you've sort of written off that there's a bunch of opportunities reset your priors there are opportunities and folks should be actually building those products because the the customer base this is the interesting thing is like that customer base yet does not yet actually know that they need an agent product and so I think there's a there's some alpha and like how you story tell this like it's not clear that like the average person some of that maybe are looking for an agent I think there's a lot of people who are like they have a problem and they just want that problem to be solved and you can solve it in a way that like really brings time back into people's day instead of like requiring them to be actively in the driver's seat the whole time so and I'll add one more comment which is doing that in the form factors that people are already familiar with still feels like there's so much alpha in this like trying to convince the small business owner to go and adopt some completely new thing that they've never heard of before that's really good they're gonna have to teach all their employees about and their family about it's a high bar to pull that off teaching the small business owner how to text with an AI assistant or how to send an email you don't have to do that they already know how to do that and so I think you can really use this like existing technology to meet people where they are at the same time that you like fundamentally introduce new technology to them and you gravity got a huge overhaul yes we should talk about yeah yeah so I think the whole integrity suite actually is coming together I think we introduced anti gravity I think like six months ago something like that sort of as an AI powered IDE and I think if you look at where it is now it's it's actually an entire ecosystem so you have anti gravity sort of the agent manager if you don't even want to like touch the code itself like personally and you want the agent to do all that for you there's the integrity agent manager on web and desktop that you can install there's the IDE the same integrity product that you're using before continues to work as an IDE you can do that there's anti gravity the CLI product so if you're a developer and you're like I love the CLI it's the best thing in the world it got that for you if you want the SDK so that you can actually build agents on your own infrastructure the SDK exists if you want anti gravity sort of powering experiences in the API because you don't want to manage the infrastructure we have that in the Gemini API and so I think the story is like anti gravity sort of as this agentic coding layer meeting you wherever you are however you want to build products actually into gravity sort of the agent harness powering be always on Gemini spark experience for consumers in the Gemini app so everywhere you go actually even going to search so everywhere you go you sort of access anti gravity now it's this it's another layer sort of bringing the Google ecosystem together just like Gemini is as well which is really exciting so how should people think about Google AI Studio and anti gravity yeah that's it that you're making my job easy that's okay that's a question I have like honestly like you know it's like I can tell you how I see it please ice you know to me it's like AI studio just feels way more comfortable by non-technical but an anti gravity just feels like more of a fully featured developer focus product but that's also changing a little bit so I'm yeah I'm curious how you see it yeah I think it's changing in both directions which is interesting I think a studio does a lot of different things we have sort of the playground experience if you want to test our latest models and agents you can get your API key to build with with Gemini API if you're a human or an agent which is exciting and we're now also we we started building this this vibe coding experience probably I think actually 12 months ago which is crazy and to see the progress of where we are today you can now natively build Android apps and sort of share them with users and download them on your phone and you can natively integrate with Google workspace without ever leaving AI studio which is also really exciting the way that I frame this and actually Andre Carpathy has the best framing of this which is it's actually two different things there's on one end of the spectrum is vibe coding on the other end of the spectrum is agentic engineering and as studio is going after vibe coding we want to make it so that you can bring your idea to life go from prompt to profitable company without ever actually having to see any code you could never look at a single line of code and we should help you do that you should be able to deploy get a database in the future add payments get a mobile app do all those things never look at a single line of code on the integrity side I think the problem they're trying to solve is like very much like production quality code you want to work in a million line code base you want to build Google we're using antigravity to build Google you want to build Google the bar is quite high you're you know we are using a studio in certain ways to build Google but like not contributing to like the Google search code base as an example and I think it's there's like a flexibility control trade off versus batteries included I think you can do anything you can use you know other models you can use you know you could be using the Open AI API if you want as part of antigravity and studio is really focused on the Google ecosystem and so we're trying to make a bunch of opinion decisions for you make it so that you don't have to think about those things actually and it just it just all works you can sign in with your Google account works out of the box you can build an Android app natively for free install it on your phone which I just found out yesterday by the day it's crazy I mean we just launched it yesterday so it's a it's a brand new it's a brand new feature that I'm excited about and page and I were talking off stage before yesterday with a bunch of folks and like neither of us had ever actually built an Android app before and it's like opened up this whole new ecosystem that we probably would I mean I love Android and Android's awesome like I was probably never going to build an Android app and so to see you know literally in the first day like tens of thousands of people go and build their first Android app in the studio literally for free I think it's really cool I mean so much alpha and just that alone right to think about it you know Android is the number one operating system so like billions of people billions of people and you don't need to be technical and you can ship your Android app and you know you need a good idea you need a good niche you have to understand distribution but there's no reason that if you want to build a mobile experience you're not just trying it out yeah and one of the intentional decisions on Android that we actually made was to make it so that these are native Android app so this isn't like you're not using one of the frameworks that sort of lets you do like all of the different ecosystems with a single app it's intentionally a native Android app and the reason for that is because we want to make sure you can actually build for all the different form factors so you can actually and this doesn't work perfectly well today but we have this sort of groundwork in place and where this is where we're incrementally getting towards but you can build for our Android XR wearables you can build so like glasses in the future in the fall when the glasses land you're going to be able to build in a studio build a native app for XR and build XR apps without ever actually writing any code you're going to be able to do the same thing for for the other wearables like the watches Android Auto you can build like apps for people in the car when they're on the go like all of those things using the same sort of setup in the same agent in a studio is really exciting and those form factors you actually don't get using any of those other like compatibility frameworks and so I think it'll be cool to sort of build these frontier type applications in a studio with with native Android apps for people who listen to this well end with this for people who listen to this what are your hopes with how you know there's hundreds of thousands of developers who and builders who are listening to this what are your hopes for these people who are watching now yeah to to go and build yeah that's a great question I think the most exciting thing is like what what YouTube did for creators I think is what's happening now for software I think there's going to be this entire generation of like software as creators where you can just like go by yourself or with a small team like go and build a business using all of these AI coding tools and I'm very excited to see similar to what YouTube has done where like you don't need this like historically to build software you need to like either get really lucky or raise a bunch of money from people in order to raise a bunch of money from people the market had to be massive and so there was all these like really really interesting problems that people have just decided they're not going to solve because the market's not big enough and I think those markets are now in play and I think it's it's just like it's alpha for the the observant person who's willing to do the diligence to like go try to find some of those opportunities and I think what why I love the content that you do is because I think you're actually helping people find those opportunities and like that is the next generation of like value creation that's going to happen is people going after these things that you wouldn't have obviously gone after five years ago when the cost to build software was so high and it you needed a 40 person team to build something now it's like one person or a small group of friends and some of these tools and anything is possible. You're off to the races. I love it. Alright thanks a lot Logan. This was great. Thank you for. Thank you for having me and First IO. First IO. Hopefully hopefully we'll have you for the next year as well and thanks for thanks for glazing the heat of of Northern California. I appreciate you. Yeah. Take care.