Gemini 2.0 Flash: Google opens the 'agentic era' and shows Astra/Mariner/Jules
In one sentence Google releases Gemini 2.0 Flash (native multimodal, tool use, image/audio output) and unveils Project Astra (real-time video assistant), Mariner (browser agent), Jules (coding agent).
In December 2024 Google releases Gemini 2.0 Flash and frames it as the start of the "agentic era". It's a natively multimodal model: not only does it understand text and images, it can also generate them (images, native voice audio) as part of the response.
Alongside the model, Google shows three agent prototypes:
- Project Astra: a universal assistant that works through the phone camera and answers questions in real time about what it sees;
- Project Mariner: a Chrome extension that does browser tasks for you (filling forms, booking, researching);
- Jules: a coding agent that works on GitHub issues.
Key point: Flash is very fast and very cheap ($0.075/$0.30 per 1M input/output tokens), cheaper than GPT-4o mini, but natively multimodal. It becomes the "default cheap+smart+fast" model many developers were waiting for.
Companies
Google, Google DeepMind
Tools
Gemini 2.0 Flash, Project Astra, Project Mariner, Jules
Tags
Sources