Google Unveils Gemini 2.0 and Project Astra: Exploring New AI Capabilities

In announcing Gemini 2.0, Google today shared the latest on Project Astra, while unveiling Project Mariner as an agent that can browse the web for you.

Google says a “new class of agentic experiences” are made possible by Gemini 2.0 Flash’s native user interface action-capabilities. All built on Gemini 2.0, these projects/prototypes are still in the “early stages of development,” but “trusted testers” now have access to them and are providing feedback.

With Gemini 2.0, there are a number of updates to Project Astra:

Better dialogue: Astra can now converse in multiple languages and in mixed languages, while better understanding accents and uncommon words. New tool use: Astra can use Google Search, Lens, and Maps to help answer your prompts Better memory: Astra “now has up to 10 minutes of in-session memory and can remember more conversations you had with it in the past, so it is better personalized to you.“ Improved latency: Astra can now understand language at about the latency of human conversation thanks to native audio understanding and new streaming capabilities

In a demo video that Google shared today, an application is shown for testing purposes but when Project Astra launches for consumers, it will be through the Gemini (Live) app. Google is also testing Astra on prototype glasses.

Meanwhile, Project Mariner is an agent that can browse and navigate the web to perform a broader task specified by the user. On the safety front, Project Mariner can only perform actions in the active browser tab.

Google demoed a small business use case and for shopping. When evaluated against the WebVoyager benchmark, which tests agent performance on end-to-end real world web tasks, Project Mariner achieved a state-of-the-art result of 83.5% working as a single agent setup.