Google's Gemini Multimodal Model: What We Know

Gemini, a new Large Multimodal Model (LMM) developed by Google, is designed to interact with and answer questions about data in various formats, including text, images, video, and audio. Announced in December 2023, Gemini is described as Google's most capable AI model, with performance reportedly exceeding state-of-the-art results on numerous academic benchmarks. Available through Google Bard and an API, Gemini is set to expand its multimodal capabilities over time. It offers three versions tailored for different use cases: Ultra, Pro, and Nano, the latter being optimized for mobile devices. While Google's evaluations highlight Gemini's strengths in visual understanding, object detection, and few-shot learning, its capabilities in video understanding and speech recognition are also emphasized. Potential applications in computer vision, such as image classification and anomaly detection, are explored, with Gemini expected to integrate into tools like Roboflow's Maestro for improved task performance. However, fine-tuned models remain preferable for real-time and niche use cases due to their specialized training and capabilities.