Google releases FunctionGemma: a tiny edge model that can control mobile devices with natural language

While Gemini 3 is still making waves, Google's not taking the foot off the gas in terms of releasing new models.

Yesterday, the company released FunctionGemma, a specialized 270-million parameter AI model designed to solve one of the most persistent bottlenecks in modern application development: reliability at the edge.

Unlike general-purpose chatbots, FunctionGemma is engineered for a single, critical utility—translating natural language user commands into structured code that apps and devices can actually execute, all without connecting to the cloud.

The release marks a significant strategic pivot for Google DeepMind and the Google AI Developers team. While the industry continues to chase trillion-parameter scale in the cloud, FunctionGemma is a bet on "Small Language Models" (SLMs) running locally on phones, browsers, and IoT devices.

For AI engineers and enterprise builders, this model offers a new architectural primitive: a privacy-first "router" that can handle complex logic on-device with negligible ...