SAN FRANCISCO: Google is close to releasing its long-awaited Gemini 4 artificial intelligence model, the head of its DeepMind division said, after the company fell behind competitors on flagship releases.
Koray Kavukcuoglu, in his first media interview since taking over DeepMind, told The Information that Gemini 4 is in a refinement stage and that Google aims to launch it "much earlier" than the end of the year.
"Our intention is to, like, as soon as possible, to release an early post-training output because we see the results and we are excited," Kavukcuoglu said. He added that Google would "continue the fast-paced iterations."
The comments suggest Google may be returning to a steadier release schedule after a leadership shake-up at DeepMind. Demis Hassabis, the division's former head, stepped down in August after announcing that "great progress" was being made on Gemini 4.
Google has not released a new flagship AI model since the Gemini 3 series in November 2025. In the time since, OpenAI has launched GPT-6 and Anthropic has released its Mythos series of models. Both outperform Gemini 3, giving the rival companies a sizable lead over Google in the AI race.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the company's I/O conference in May that a major Gemini 3.5 Pro update would arrive in June to help close the gap. The model was never released.
Kavukcuoglu said Google "took a little bit of a step back" and chose to focus on faster, less powerful Flash models instead of releasing Gemini 3.5 Pro.
Asked whether he was worried about Google trailing its rivals, Kavukcuoglu said: "In my mind, it's a certainty that we are always gonna be at the frontier."
