Google’s Gemini Robotics AI Model Reaches Into the Physical World

In sci-fi tales, artificial intelligence often powers all sorts of clever, capable, and occasionally homicidal robots. A revealing limitation of today’s best AI is that, for now, it remains squarely trapped inside the chat window.

Google DeepMind signaled a plan to change that today—presumably minus the homicidal part—by announcing a new version of its AI model Gemini that fuses language, vision, and physical action together to power a range of more capable, adaptive, and potentially useful robots.

In a series of demonstration videos, the company showed several robots equipped with the new model, called Gemini Robotics, manipulating items in response to spoken commands: Robot arms fold paper, hand over vegetables, gently put a pair of glasses into a case, and complete other tasks. The robots rely on the new model to connect items that are visible with possible actions in order to do what they’re told ...