Google Preps Public Preview of Gemini AI After Postponing In-Person Launch Events

Update, Dec.4: After Google quietly scrapped a set of in-person events to launch Gemini, its biggest artificial intelligence initiative in a decade, the company has planned a virtual preview of the new AI as soon as this week, said a person with knowledge of the situation.

By giving journalists and software developers a first look at some of the technology’s capabilities, Google could relieve some pressure from investors to prove it can catch up to ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Google representatives for weeks have been giving private demonstrations of the technology to business partners but they have said that cloud customers wouldn’t get access to the primary version of Gemini until next year.

Google has quietly delayed the public debut of Gemini, a conversational artificial intelligence that aims to compete with OpenAI, to January, two people with knowledge of the decision said.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently decided to scrap a series of Gemini events, originally scheduled for next week in California, New York and Washington, after the company found the AI didn’t reliably handle some non-English queries, one of these people said. The planned events, which hadn’t been publicized, would have marked Google’s most important product launch of the year, after it strained its computing resources and merged large teams in an urgent pursuit of OpenAI.