Gemini 4 Hydrogen (blog.google)

444 pointsby dvaplima6 hours ago286 comments

wds 6 hours ago

This was rolled out RIGHT away, as when I just went to use Gemini, seeing 3.8 Flash be replaced with "4 Hydrogen" was less hype and more a thought along the line of "What [on Earth] is Gemini Hydrogen???", then me going here to figure it out.

This model naming scheme works for separate products, but using elements, molecules, etc. for products you're supposed to compare with each other... Not very helpful.

If anything, my intuition would say that Hydrogen is more powerful than Argon... I don't know. Not liking this naming scheme trend.

fnord77 6 hours ago

cargo culting

"Claude and Codex have cool names, they are more successful than us, so therefore if we give gemini cool names we'll be successful too"

-marketing drone, probably

bad_haircut72 5 hours ago

they probably went to chatGPT and asked for good names

ff2400t 5 hours ago

I don't think it's good scheme to follow but google is just following the trend of anthropic and OpenAI set up. I don't think anyone can understand Anthropic's Model naming scale with Haiku, opus, fable and Mythos. Similar with the OpenAI tera and other models in their line up.

wds 5 hours ago

I find theirs to be a lot more excusable, given it's obvious that the Sun is bigger than the Earth, which is bigger than the Moon. Anthropic less-so, but if you know the meaning of each, you can infer it somewhat well.

Google's is just random.

A_D_E_P_T 5 hours ago

> but google is just following the trend of anthropic and OpenAI set up.

They botched it.

A haiku is a short poem. A sonnet is a longer work. An opus is a great work. Mythos is a connected body of works.

As with Open AI, Luna --> Terra --> Sol --> Astra from smallest to largest. Very straightforward.

With Google it's totally incoherent. Hydrogen --> Argon --> Carbon!?

Hydrogen is small, but it's the most abundant element in the universe by far. Argon is >3x larger than carbon by molecular mass, though carbon is more abundant. It's impossible to determine what's supposed to be smaller and what's supposed to be larger.

rfgplk 5 hours ago

Yea, impossible to know whether it's supposed to go by atomic mass, frequency or some other metric. Plus most people off the top of their heads don't really have these stats memorized. With OpenAI and Anthropic it's way more straightforward. If you stop the average person on the street and told them to order the three by mass, most couldn't do it. But they could order Moon/Earth/Sun/Astra

A_D_E_P_T 5 hours ago

Yeah. Atomic mass: Makes no sense, argon is larger than carbon. Frequency: Makes no sense, argon is least frequent of the three and hydrogen is everywhere, so carbon would be in-between rather than the flagship.

Letters of the alphabet: Also makes no sense. There was a theory that Argon = A, that there was an unreleased B model (Bismuth or Barium or something), Carbon = C, etc. (Similar to Intel's MMORPG-inspired Alchemist --> Battlemage --> Celestial...) Hydrogen broke this notion.

It's just completely incoherent.

coafos 4 hours ago

Now written out like this, I can see a D = Deuterium, which is mass 2 or heavy hydrogen, but somewhere along along the line it was lost in translation.

Auracle 5 hours ago

I’m not sure if the average person on the street would know the terms Luna, Terra, Sol, and especially Astra.

Also, the biggest being Astra is a bit confusing. Sol is also a star.

Furthermore, unless you know they’re supposed to be ordered by size you can’t know which is best.

petesergeant 4 hours ago

> I’m not sure if the average person on the street would know the terms Luna, Terra, Sol, and especially Astra.

I don't think these are as difficult as you're making them sound? I think the majority of people who will care what model they're using will know "lunar", "terrestrial", "solar", "astronomy" etc?

postepowanieadm 4 hours ago

Corsa, Astra, Vectra and Omega would be better names.

Yizahi 2 hours ago

I see that Kadett finally disintegrated into nothingness :)

small_model 3 hours ago

The average person isn't supposed to care, they won't be switching models to prompt for the best television for under $1000. But for professionals they should have some sort of understanding of these things.

cortesoft 5 hours ago

I never made these connections until now. This will really help me remember which is which, I honestly had just given up.

bacheaul an hour ago

It's funny how different naming schemes "click" (or don't) with different people in different ways. When I first heard the haiku/sonnet/opus it was immediately obvious that they were linking the size of the model to the size of the piece of writing. Same with moon/planet/sun etc. for OpenAI's models.

If Google was going to go with elements, it should have been an absolute no-brainer to link size of of the element to the size of the model eg. Hydrogen/carbon/argon, but no, Google screws up the naming like they _always_ do. Hell, use the noble gases for christ sake. Helium/neon/argon/krypton/xeon would have been great, not perfect mind you, because a lot of people might not remember the ordering of those elements, but at least it would be consistent and make sense.

0gs 5 hours ago

when you put it this way, it sounds like they are operating on an XY axis (at least) vs a continuum. Argon big, complicated, slow AND expensive; Carbon abundant, widely available, can do anything, costly as a result; Hydrogen, abundant, volatile, cheap. can't imagine how insane Nitrogen must be

mamcx 4 hours ago

Sometimes I wonder if naming things is hard or what.

lp92 4 hours ago

Google genuinely have made a huge mess with their AI product stack. They have Antigravity, Antigravity IDE, Gemini app, AI Studio, etc. They have too many similarly named and confusing products. Google should seriously fire their branding team and bring some new talent to consolidate and restructure things logically.

Abstract_Typist 4 hours ago

Maybe the AI is trying to tell us its real name !

Ar - C - H - ?

A_D_E_P_T 4 hours ago

If the next two are oxygen and nitrogen, which are plausible, that would be somewhat sinister.

Yizahi an hour ago

So the next model will be Yttrium?:)

kccqzy 4 hours ago

Of course Google is ordering their models by their density at standard temperature and pressure.

Hydrogen: this thing floats. Density less than air.

Argon: does not float. Density more than air.

Carbon: this thing is a solid, whichever allotrope you pick. It’s solidly heavier.

See, so easy! /s

smcameron 2 hours ago

I don't know if it's a good idea to market one's AIs by how "dense" they are.

kccqzy 2 hours ago

Of course not. See the /s tag.

sumeno 4 hours ago

What's a fable? Why is it bigger than an Opus?

triyambakam 5 hours ago

I guess it's poetic but I don't see how haiku < sonnet < opus < fable < mythos is unclear. If you've never been exposed to literature maybe?

sidibe 5 hours ago

You day that very matter of factly as if it doesn't include "opus < fable"

arcfour 4 hours ago

I think people on HN argue way too much about this. It's not like they're named iPhone 18 Pro XL Max. It's meant to evoke a feeling of wonder or awe, not really that hard of a logical leap to make, and it's only one minor quibble. Jeesh.

ayewo 4 hours ago

Mythos (Greek) = Fable (Latin)

Fable is essentially Mythos but with guard rails added.

amunozo 5 hours ago

Anthropic's naming does not make sense, but at least they are consistent.

ajmurmann 5 hours ago

What about it makes no sense? I find it to make the most sense, given it's about text generation and their models are named from shortest text to longest.

akoboldfrying 5 hours ago

I think the others are mostly pretty clear. A haiku is a very short poem; a sonnet is a longer poem; an opus is an artistic masterwork ("Magnum opus"), so not necessarily longer but certainly grander. Mythos is slightly more tenuous but still goes in the direction of "cultural awe", something that the highest forms of writing aim for. Fable isn't a perfect name TBH, it sounds much less grand than "mythos" to my ears despite being roughly the same product AFAICT, and with a dangerous hint of "I might make things up".

I think OpenAI's names are clearest. In most people's understanding, moon < Earth < sun < stars.

derektank 5 hours ago

More importantly, Anthropic has been consistent with their naming convention for years (two, yes, but plural years) now. OpenAI and Google’s habit of changing naming conventions semi-regularly makes their products harder to grok.

scottLobster 5 hours ago

Android version names were random desserts for the longest time. People are expecting too much from Google here

gloxkiqcza 4 hours ago

They weren't random. They were alphabetical. The first letter of the name always shifted to the next letter in the alphabet.

• Cupcake (Android 1.5)

• Donut (Android 1.6)

• Eclair (Android 2.0–2.1)

• Froyo (Android 2.2)

• Gingerbread (Android 2.3)

• Honeycomb (Android 3.0–3.2)

• Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0)

• Jelly Bean (Android 4.1–4.3)

• KitKat (Android 4.4)

• Lollipop (Android 5.0–5.1)

• Marshmallow (Android 6.0)

• Nougat (Android 7.0–7.1)

• Oreo (Android 8.0–8.1)

• Pie (Android 9)

oblio 4 hours ago

This isn't the same situation. Android versions always had 2 parts: the number and the name. They were always easy to follow.

Using constantly changing names for tiers is a bad idea. Unless the tiers are pre-existing (bronze, silver, gold).

KeplerBoy 4 hours ago

They were alphabetically ordered random desserts. It wasn't too bad.

oblio 4 hours ago

> Fable isn't a perfect name TBH

Fables are short.

They should have used "saga" / "epic" / "cycle" / "series" / "universe".

yunwal 4 hours ago

I realize that you're making a point about ordering here but realistically none of these except maybe Saga work as Anthropic product names.

oblio an hour ago

Epic and Universe for sure work as LLM model names.

lukevp 4 hours ago

I think of it as earth being where I am, not in relation to the size of the items, so to me it’s weird that Luna is far away, then Terra is close, then Sol is further. So even those names aren’t clear to everyone. Actually I didn’t realize the ordering was size-based until you said it. And Astra isn’t really a size, is it?

cloverich 5 hours ago

This is so dorky, but I have a comparison with frisbees. In Disc golf each brand does its own naming scheme related to the speed / stability of discs. One company (Prodigy) produced a _roughly_ ordered approach and people very regularly commented on how confusing it was. By comparison, other brands (which got no critiques) have literally arbitrary names matching only a theme (e.g. electricity, animals, ...mental disorders/phenomena). It took me a very long time to come to grips with it. I ultimately think with branding... it only matters that people who use the system can identify things as distinct. I think the subset of minds that wants a strictly logical relationship to ordering is fleetingly small. To most people its additionally not even relevant.

My only real complaint with Google is they regularly change names for seemingly no reason. I'm still out here saying "Gemini" when I type "agy" and I don't bother saying "Anti gravity" because I assume that name won't exist in a year or two.

bobtheborg 5 hours ago

OMG, it rolled out on my paid Google Workspace account already too! What a change from ~"wait 8 weeks or more from google.com rollout to <yourdomain> rollout"

Thanks any Googlers who had a hand in this

alex_duf 5 hours ago

I'm going to assume they are saving on inference by rolling it out faster.

n_u 5 hours ago

Why do you think rolling out faster -> more inference savings?

xeshuman 5 hours ago

Smaller model, likely.

rpdillon 5 hours ago

If one of the dimensions it improves upon is inference cost per unit of work, then switching over to it would save money, and the sooner you do that, the more you save.

WASDx 5 hours ago

If it's more efficient than 3.8 that it replaces.

jychang 2 hours ago

Here's an explaination of what's going on in the backend.

Alibaba is forced to do this stuff: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/al...

Meanwhile Deepseek: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45643163#45652636

Havoc 2 hours ago

You'd think so but they've been updating gemini.google.com really slowly. Up until couple weeks ago it still had gemini 3.1 - which is a February release model.

So this is an actual change of pace

lavendermon 5 hours ago

Look at how many AI adjacent products Google talks about in this press release along with its model names. Anthropic and OpenAI are guilty of it as well, so many models and ways of working with them right now, letting the users figure out the nuances of each.

Earlier today I found myself asking ChatGPT to research and explain exactly what Anthropic Playground is for and how specifically it may differ for my tasks from Anthropic Workspace, Chat, Code, and API credits. I chose ChatGPT Sol 6.1 high for this task going on gut feel, hoping it was the best model to handle that job without wasting my precious Claude tokens.

ajmurmann 5 hours ago

I think there need to build these adjacent things to create lock in. I can switch between Claude, GPT and pretty much and model on OpenRouter in little time, especially for dev work. With all of these being weeks apart in progress on the models and open-weight models seemingly getting closer and closer there is almost no moat. Without a moat they cannot charge high prices - it's a commodity. Having lots of my data in their system and having other exclusinve features like Claude Design or Whiteboard and what not, they create something that I cannot keep if I switch to a different vendor for a cheaper model.

handzhiev 5 hours ago

It's the equivalent of Gemini Flash, judging by the API price. I just tried it in the Gemini app, it's much better than the previous version.

ngomezdev 5 hours ago

Agreed on the naming issue and while it was novel at first it will inevitably get worse as more models get release, until decide to abandon it all together. It’s like they are setting themselves up for failure on that front lol

dontlikeyoueith 5 hours ago

Naming an AI model Argon will never not be hilarious to me.

It doesn't do anything! It's inert!

oblio 4 hours ago

I'm waiting for Gemini 5 Uranium.

Which will be launched after GPT 7 Uranus.

fastball 5 hours ago

Yes the naming is nonsensical, because the intelligence ranking is this (with atomic numbers in parentheses for those that don't have the periodic table memorized):

Carbon (6) > Hydrogen (1) > Argon (18).

Double nonsense because it appears Hydrogen is in fact a smaller model than Argon, in which case this should obviously be released as "Gemini 4.1 Hydrogen" or something.

What they probably should've done if they really wanted to use elements is to do noble gases, and start these first three models in the middle (to leave room for bigger/smaller models in the future).

So you'd have:

Argon => Argon (18)

Hydrogen => Krypton (36)

Carbon => Xenon (54)

Not exactly because as noted it appears hydrogen is in fact the smaller model, but then this should be (again) 4.1 or something.

And they'd leave space for a truly massive model if needed (Radon) and two slots for much smaller models, with Helium (2) presumably being a model that could be run on basically any consumer device.

yasindce1998 4 hours ago

They just trying to register the model names into our mind. Now a days we remember Fable, Opus, Sonnet. I think Google trying to do the same.

bananaflag 3 hours ago

Problem is we have no idea here what it should mean.

Carbon is the next version of Argon. But Hydrogen is supposed to coexist with Carbon. Also no idea where the scheme is coming from, what elements should we expect.

shawabawa3 3 hours ago

Also I intuitively get that a sonnet is "shorter" than an opus (although Fable is less clear) - I have no idea what i'm even supposed to be comparing with google elements... Atomic number? I know hydrogen is the lowest and i guess argon is bigger than carbon but am I expected to know that? Or is it by weight? Argon's a gas so it's lighter than Carbon?

The sol/terra/astra, haiku/sonnet/opus clicked without needing to be explained

bananaflag 2 hours ago

A mythos is longer than an opus.

A fable is a tame mythos.

Revanche1367 2 hours ago

Is Carbon the next version of Argon? My understanding was that Argon is the middle-tier model (somewhere between OpenAI's Terra and Sol in position) whereas Carbon is supposed to be like Astra. This is assuming they don't have an even higher tier model upcoming, in which case Argon ~ Terra, Carbon ~ Sol and Element X (Plutonium?) ~ Astra.

Wild guess: maybe they are going with how abundant the elements are to scale the models. I'm no chemist so I don't know reliably how the relative abundance of Argon and Carbon works out, but Hydrogen is "well-known" as the most abundant element in the universe, so maybe that's why its the base model. But, this is essentially a trend of one, so not a trend at all, unless someone can verify it still works for Argon and Carbon.

throwaway473825 an hour ago

If you look at Google's API pricing, Gemini 4 Carbon and Gemini 4 Argon are the same while Gemini 4 Hydrogen and Gemini 3.8 Flash are the same (ignoring promotional pricing).

Intuitively, Argon is 4 Pro, Carbon is 4.1 Pro, and Hydrogen is 4.1 Flash (slightly better than Argon according to benchmarks).

10111001 31 minutes ago

> Carbon is the next version of Argon. But Hydrogen is supposed to coexist with Carbon. Also no idea where the scheme is coming from, what elements should we expect.

The problem with using elements names simultaneously as both version numbers and product tiers, is that inevitably you will face a confusing collision or you will exhaust the space.

gruez 12 minutes ago

Openai/anthropic's model names have the same issue too

esafak 4 hours ago

Maybe the confusion is the plan; keep people talking.

No matter what you do you can't go wrong if you spin it right!

nxtfari 4 hours ago

Same, my eyebrows about jumped off my face. To go from Google as normal -- product announced, rolls out randomly in some access modalities, mysteriously doesn't in others because no org talks to any other org -- to "wait wtf is this new model I didn't even hear about this" is so laughably bizarre. Not going to get used to it, I know Google.

oblio 4 hours ago

For Google Workspace users: please replace the ancient 3.1 Pro in Gemini. I think it's 10 months old...

ansk 4 hours ago

The general trend -- naming models classes after objects from some implicitly ordered set -- was started by Anthropic. It's generally fine, but they didn't leave enough headroom for their largest models, so the implied ordering for opus/fable/mythos is kind of muddled to the average person.

Small/medium/large/etc. has the most easily deducible ordering, but it's not great from a marketing perspective and also has headroom issues unless you're ok with names like gpt-8-xxxxl.

OpenAI's naming is probably the best. The ordering is easily deducible and there's plenty of headroom in both directions. Tons of cool sci-fi sounding names still on the table, and it also comes with the implication that they're approaching a singularity.

I don't know what Google is doing. It's kind of impressive to have an inconsistent ordering after only three names.

brookst an hour ago

OpenAI's mostly works, except Luna and Terra are swapped depending on whether you think of it as "distance from earth" or "size/magnitude of object".

Google, though, really has broken new ground in incoherence. WTF.

drob518 3 hours ago

Yea, it’s Terra 6.1 and Sonnet 5.5 level performance, per the benchmarks. Like you, I was left wondering whether this was better or worse than Argon, etc. It’s not intuitive; gotta read the fine print.

throwaway473825 2 hours ago

According to Artificial Analysis, Gemini 4 Hydrogen (54) is closer to GPT-6.1 Sol (55) than GPT-6.1 Terra (51). Interestingly, it's also better than Gemini 4 Argon (50), which was Google's previous Pro model. Claude Sonnet 5.5 (55) is slightly ahead though.

quixoticelixer- an hour ago

I'm still not sure if Carbon is meant to replace Argon or meant to be used alongside it?

throwitaway222 38 minutes ago

the naming scheme "trend" (opus/sonnet/haiku vs luna/terra/sol/astra) is just fine. It's just Google's version of it that sucks.

ComputerGuru 6 hours ago

As this is a) being served in Search, b) supposed to be 2.5x faster than 3.8 Flash, c) the element with lowest atomic weight; I deduce that, despite being more capable than 3.8 Flash, now the “entry level” model set to replace 3.5 Flash Lite.

But it is priced the same as the non-discounted 3.8 Flash, considerably higher than what anyone is paying today for 3.8 Flash or 3.5 Flash Lite or the deprecated 3.0/2.x Gemini models. How does this work? Is Google abandoning the “fast and cheap” tier? That seems like a mistake since plenty of workflows are absolutely price inelastic, meaning when the 3.8 Flash discount ends at EOY, lots of current enterprise Gemini customers would have to take their business to another shop??

pqdbr 6 hours ago

Same impression here. If this is Google's strategy we'll have to migrate to Luna, because costs are already high for our workload on 3.8 Flash (which in itself was already a 40% increase compared to 3.7 flash due to being more verbose and thinking more) and this now doubles cost once again.

amarcheschi 6 hours ago

Isn't something open weight cheaper (and probably better as well)?

ComputerGuru 6 hours ago

Depends on your needs. Gemini Flash has best bang for your buck on visual tasks and best multilingual support/intelligence for non-Western/non-East-Asian languages; better than paid or OSS alternatives.

amarcheschi 6 hours ago

Yes I gave for granted textual tasks but they're not the only ones. If I remember correctly, mistral large should be good as well on image tasks while being cheap(er). I never had to do anything with less common languages tho

ComputerGuru 6 hours ago

Yeah, and they rug-pulled 3.7 very quickly, silently redirecting to 3.8 Flash. Raised our prices and broke some workflows.

alexgoodhart 3 hours ago

Yeah they fuckin did

netrem 6 hours ago

In the Gemini app it's replaced Flash. Lite is still there.

irthomasthomas 6 hours ago

But that's an old model, and if they replace it they have no smaller element to use for it's name. I guess it would have to be Hydrogen Light.

egeozcan 6 hours ago

I suppose they could name it proton or hydron.

agildehaus 6 hours ago

Quark/Neutrino/Axion/Tachyon.

iamdelirium 6 hours ago

The fact that there is still a flash lite dropdown in Gemini points to them keeping the flash lite model family.

irthomasthomas 6 hours ago

So all models will be named after elements except Flash Light? Or maybe the next version will be named Hydrogen Light?

wmf 6 hours ago

Gemini Electron?

p_l 5 hours ago

Isn't Flash-lite or related model the one used for AI summary in Google Search?

deaux 5 hours ago

> considerably higher than what anyone is paying today for 3.8 Flash or 3.5 Flash Lite or the deprecated 3.0/2.x Gemini models

It's cheaper than the last Pro models.

wasabi991011 4 hours ago

According to Artificial Analysis, it's much cheaper per task than 3.8 flash, 3$ for H xhigh vs 6-7$ for 3.8 medium-high. I don't understand how though, since AA says it has more output tokens per task.

declanjackson 2 hours ago

Hi there - AA employee here. This is due to 3.8 Flash having a much lower cache hit rate compared to Gemini 4 Hydrogen

nightshift1 16 minutes ago

sorry if this is a dumb question, but how is this possible? what can cause the cache hit rate to change just by changing the model?

tobias2014 3 hours ago

Anyone else got suspended for just using agy on the command line? "This service has been disabled in this account for violation of Terms of Service. Please submit an appeal to continue using this product.". The support claims that it can do nothing, not even see a reason and pointed me toward a form with no text inputs just a checkbox along the lines of "I understand the TOS, please check". So I filed an appeal, and it seems that it was automatically processed and within a few minutes. agy was working for one more prompt and it triggered a suspension again. What channel can I use to get any attention on something like this? I've heard these Google horror stories... fortunately this is only the Antigravity part, but I've just today upgraded to Ultra and this coincided with that. I've become extremely hesitant to continue using broader Google services when this can not be resolved via their customer support.

Diederich 3 hours ago

> Anyone else got suspended for just using agy on the command line?

So I'm a little spooked by this; if you don't mind, can you be specific about exactly what you did that seems to have preceded this?

tobias2014 3 hours ago

I am also spooked. I reached out to support once more, and they seem to have escalated this to backend support (seemingly working on a fix live?). So this seems to be some larger issue and not a "typical" false positive. If I get to know anything about the reason, I'll follow up here.

The thing that preceded this was an upgrade to ultra today from pro, and a call of agy cli from within opencode (explicitly not using it via some login/oauth, but just calling `agp -p "prompt"`, which had been working for months). Right now it seems that every agy chat works for 1-3 messages, then gives a suspension error.

If this gets resolved via live/email support timely I would be fine. But I am spooked by the appeal form/process that is completely opaque via a google form(!) and seemingly can can take days: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScOJWibQ_-hYuVv63kJ...

matt3210 2 hours ago

The slop is strong with this one

jbm an hour ago

I used agy for apps and had no problems... However, the idea of this happening never occurred to me. It might make more sense to have my AI services under a different account :-(

drivebyhooting 5 hours ago

If there are any Google employees reading:

I want to go all in the Gemini ecosystem but several things keep me going back to OpenAI:

* the Gemini app is glitchy on iPhone (my chats frequently fail or are lost if I background the app)

* the Work equivalent (I guess task?) is not as powerful. I often have ChatGPT Work to arbitrary computation and even install ML on the short-lived VM.

* there is no simple integration between antigravity and the Gemini app. I want a way to continue working away from my server while using the familiar app. No I don’t want VNC.

* ChatGPT sites are cool for putting up proof of concepts with zero effort

brickers 5 hours ago

Does the antigravity iOS app give you the remote coding features you're looking for?

n_u 5 hours ago

Is there an antigravity iOS app? I just searched on the App Store and couldn’t find one

brickers 4 hours ago

Sorry, no there isn’t - I thought there was but it’s just a pwa for https://antigravity.google.com/

wmedrano 4 hours ago

I've only briefly tried it, but can (at least on Linux), run `agy remote-control start` and then access the device through antigravity.goole.com

jsw97 4 hours ago

* Getting banned from Gemini could mean nuking your gmail account. Can't afford that risk even at low levels.

WarmWash 4 hours ago

I believe this has been rectified and now if you get caught breaking Gemini ToS, it just bans you from Gemini (I think you might even get a cool-down warning ban first).

For more egregious violations like the kid uploading naked pictures of himself, I don't know.

jsw97 3 hours ago

Glad to see this. However, given the general level of product confusion in the Gemini lineup, I'm not planning on relying on this even if it is their intent.

wasabi991011 4 hours ago

FYI, you can use Antigravity as a web app with "remote control" mode. It works pretty well, better than VNC since the page is responsive, though the text is pretty small and the UX if not really differen than the computer version.

olladecarne 4 hours ago

I've found agy remote control doesn't work anywhere as nicely as claude code. I tried using agy on my PC, enabled remote control, then opened on my Android browser. If I type anything, there is no way for me to delete (backspace) if I make any typos other than refreshing the page. It basically made the experience unusable for me. I don't understand how something so basic as the backspace button can be broken. Every time I try a Google AI product something very basic is broken. PDF uploads on the Gemini app also don't work nearly as well as with ChatGPT or Claude. These are all things I'm sure Gemini Carbon can find and fix in 1 day. I don't understand how they ignore basic UX to such an extreme.

adamisnotroman 2 hours ago

If I had to guess the backspace bug is usually the Android keyboard. Gboard sends composition events instead of keydown events, and a lot of web UIs only listen for keydown. Switching off predictive text or trying a different keyboard fixed it for me.

Otherwise you can use agy on the Cosyra mobile app, its far better. I'm not going to claim its better than the Claude app, but its certainly better than the Gemini RC.

hn_throw2025 an hour ago

> there is no simple integration between antigravity and the Gemini app. I want a way to continue working away from my server while using the familiar app.

On the other hand, I'm very glad they have separate quotas.

JacobAsmuth 6 hours ago

I think a new default free model for AI Mode being so close to the frontier will be a massive jump in perceived AI intelligence by the general public.

redox99 6 hours ago

It will be the same as these smaller models from OAI and Ant. Strong in benchmarks but pretty bad in real world use.

I've read this same comment every time a new Luna came out, and the difference between free GPT (Luna) and paid (Sol and Astra) is still outrageous for general use.

WarmWash 6 hours ago

3.8 flash was easily the best general everyday person model yet though

notatoad 6 hours ago

3.8 flash was never served to free users on google though?

JacobAsmuth 6 hours ago

3.8 Flash was served to free users in AI Mode IIRC

WarmWash 6 hours ago

Only for pro and ultra users

The free default was 3.5 flash lite.

JacobAsmuth 5 hours ago

Ah, you're correct.

Gareth321 5 hours ago

Maybe I’m spoiled but I found it repulsively dumb. Some of the highest rates of hallucinations since GPT-3. Incredibly lazy. Heavily biased to parametric knowledge and speed over accuracy. I would rather have no AI at all than use that.

JacobAsmuth 6 hours ago

I think this is a completely different class from Luna and is much more akin to 6.1 Sol in terms of capabilities and general intelligence.

redox99 6 hours ago

Maybe, although google tends to benchmaxx. If it's actually sol for free that's kinda crazy good.

seizethecheese 5 hours ago

It's definitely not the case that small models only do well in benchmarks. We're working on a battle system on top of OpenCode, so have data for real people doign real work.

Right now DeepSeek Flash 4.1 Flash has a 64% win rate against GPT 6.1 Sol. Small data still, but it has 33 wins vs. 18 losses, which is confidence interval of 52% - 78% win rate. https://agentduel.com/leaderboard/models/deepseek/deepseek-v...

redox99 4 hours ago

That's coding though. I was talking about general usage.

seizethecheese 3 hours ago

Okay, makes sense, though I don’t see a huge difference in quality between Luna and Astra for basic chat usage.

vatsachak 6 hours ago

This is the most important class of models to keep watch. These are the ones that are going be to workhorses in the post-tokenmaxxing clarity

jrflo 6 hours ago

Disagree, Opus-tier models are the workhorses. You can get a ton done with them on a $100 subscription.

vallerie 6 hours ago

And for those on API billing? Opus is still quite pricy for what you're getting done with it.

airstrike 6 hours ago

> And for those on API billing?

Opus-tier on open models and local hardware.

XCSme 6 hours ago

Why stay on API billing? A $200 monthly subscription has a crazy amount of usage and more than enough for a couple of concurrent projects.

demibabs 6 hours ago

Enterprises with more than 150 seats have to pay API costs.

jesperwe 5 hours ago

Or get multiple teams. Just use git instead of artifacts ;-)

sz4kerto 6 hours ago

Because you can't get subscription if your company has more than 150 users.

scrollop 5 hours ago

So they move to non SOTA models.

jrflo 6 hours ago

If you're on API billing then presumably you're a business, and $1,000 a month is still reasonable for that quality of work

szatkus 6 hours ago

Those subscriptions won't be subsidized forever. At least not as much as they are today.

selectodude 6 hours ago

API token inference is subsidizing the rest of the business.

scrollop 6 hours ago

Price per token is dropping (though anthropic are doing dastardly things such as using new tokenizers that use 30% more tokens), efficiency will likely increase.

If the subscriptions (of all of the big companies - unlikely?) give a poor amount of value in the future, will move to trusted/open router and use a harness that uses the latest cheap good models for most things, more expensive models as orchestrators.

Already there are non-SOTA models that should be sufficient for most non-coding tasks, and soon for coding, also.

The future is bright, in that respect, without subsidizing the ridiculous IPOs.

cortesoft 5 hours ago

People keep saying this, but inference itself is not what is being subsidized. The expense for electricity/hardware/datacenter operations/etc for an inference token is less than what they charge for it, so that cost doesn’t HAVE to go up to be profitable.

The thing that is being subsidized is the TRAINING costs, and that is because they aren’t selling enough tokens yet to pay for the training costs. This is just like most other growth businesses, though, and if enough people use enough inference, it can be self sustaining.

Rodmine 3 hours ago

Or $20 for the same amount of work with US/EU hosted Deepseek flash v4.1.

raincole 6 hours ago

Assuming the price would converge to the subscription price, not the API price.

demibabs 6 hours ago

For users who pay subscription costs, 100% right.

But for enterprises, who have to pay API costs with no discounts, no way.

agildehaus 6 hours ago

Only because you're being heavily subsidized.

vatsachak 5 hours ago

They make money on API costs not subscriptions. Subscriptions are not going to last forever

Rebelgecko 2 hours ago

I thought Opus is strictly worse than Fable now?

ltbarcly3 6 hours ago

I like that you gave an argument and careful reasoning instead of just a vague claim based on common meme about ejaculation.

How is tokenmaxxing like ejaculating exactly? I don't follow the analogy.

ezrabuenk 6 hours ago

I think he's just saying tokenmaxxing is a temporary hype lol, probably fueled by subsidized subscriptions. When that's over, these cheaper models might get more usage.

pixelready 6 hours ago

Why is this exchange reminding me of that You Can See Everything documentary?

The analogy made sense to me: Tokenmaxxing policies were the result of an irrational drive by execs who just craved an, ahem, explosion of metrics due to the excitement over new technology. Now that cost sensitivities are setting in, there’s a growing sense of unease that maybe they were in an altered state when they created the mess and now that the excitement has passed they have to clean it up.

ltbarcly3 3 hours ago

So people had this drive to use tokens, and once they experienced the release from using the tokens they went into a refractory period where their reasoning is no longer being overridden by the need to use tokens? And later I guess they'll start to feel more and more of a need to use tokens and this will repeat?

Or is it just a throwaway phrase that makes no sense?

pixelready 2 hours ago

We’ll see if the cycle holds true for tokens or LLMs specifically, but for sure there is a larger “new sexy tech” cycle with a strongly emotional output===outcomes metrics irrationality phase to it.

vatsachak 5 hours ago

Here is the argument

1) There was a false narrative called tokenmaxxing whereby one is more productive by spending more tokens

2) This narrative was fueled by discount prices on tokens (which still happens to this day on subscriptions)

3) There is a point where we collectively realize that tokenmaxxing was a state of mind that is not rational for either the consumer or provider

4) We will then pay API prices because LLMs are obviously amazing but no one will offer subscriptions

5) API costs of Opus 5.5 and Fable tier become uneconomical

6) That leaves us in Sonnet/Haiku tier

ltbarcly3 3 hours ago

I understand his assertion, and I can make up an argument that fits it too, probably a few arguments that aren't even compatible with each other, but what you said isn't what he said, you are just assuming all of this, and also nowhere here does it explain how this fits an analogy of "post nut clarity".

vander_elst 6 hours ago

Can anyone understand the logic behind the names? Argon, hydrogen, carbon, what is the mental model one should use to understand where they fit, or what comes before/after?

Haiku, sonnet, opus.. is ok

terra, Luna, Sol... is also ok..

but this?

krisroadruck 6 hours ago

My guess, by atomic weight. Hydrogen = "sonnet". Carbon = "opus". Argon = "Fable" only argon 4 just happens to be kinda shit? But also it's google so who the hell knows. They could be just going alphabetical argon, then carbon, then hydrogen as release order follows the alphabet. That'd be kinda dumb but so is their access/subscription strategy so it'd be on brand.

DefineOutside 5 hours ago

I thought they were going by alphabetical order like intel does for GPUs

A = argon for initial release B was skipped because you can't name a product boron C = carbon D = ??????

They might be going for atomic weight, but the average person couldn't say whether argon or carbon was heavier.

InvisibleUp 4 hours ago

"Argon" had me thinking they would go with a noble gas theme, with Helium as the light one and Xeon as the heavyweight.

forgotpwd16 5 hours ago

Reasoning-wise Carbon > Argon (so actually is Carbon, Argon = "Fable", "Opus").

willy_k 5 hours ago

Carbon can be more performant while being a smaller model.

forgotpwd16 5 hours ago

H lightest (highest speed), Ar stabilizer (balanced), C structural bonds (highest reasoning)?

vander_elst 4 hours ago

I like the theory, curious how this will evolve though

anentropic 5 hours ago

Also... Argon and Carbon are the same price, but Carbon is better I guess?

And "Hydrogen surpasses Argon on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index at its default high thinking level"

Given it's twice the price of 3.8 Flash I hope they would find room for another cheaper tier, but the Hydrogen name suggests not.

I'm glad Google are coming out with some decent models but it's a slightly confusing line up.

motoboi 5 hours ago

The higher the atomic mass, the higher the intelligence.

GaggiX 5 hours ago

It's not, Gemini 4 Carbon is better than Gemini 4 Argon.

Argon internally was called Barium (Argon was a different model) so the models were originally named in alphabetical order. Then they change their mind and decided to call the lightweight model following the atomic weight so Hydrogen after they have released (A)rgon and (C)arbon. I imagine that this lightweight model is the original Argon.

mda 5 hours ago

Carbon > Argon > Hydrogen not that hard?

jdiff an hour ago

It's 3 items, it's not difficult. But there's no way to infer that from the names alone and that's Bad Product Naming.

resolutefunctor 4 hours ago

They are all terribly named, but Gemini models definitely take the cake right now.

aoeusnth1 4 hours ago

They started out alphabetical for their pro releases: argon, barium (never released), carbon

Then they needed a flash model so they picked the lightest element.

vander_elst 3 hours ago

They dropped the ball pretty quickly

layoric 2 hours ago

Always rely on Google to mess up product launches

JV00 6 hours ago

Personally I found my usage of llms bimodal, I only have uses for the top frontier models (for research and development) or for the cheapest and fastest ones (to use in production for consolidated, simple flows). I am curious what people find the mid tier models useful for.

XCSme 6 hours ago

Same, I either use xhigh on best model, or use cheapest and fastest models (mercury/jev/haiku/luna)

kccqzy 5 hours ago

In the Opus 4.6 days xhigh was a meaningful improvement. These days with Opus 5.5 I just don’t see a meaningful quality increase.

XCSme 5 hours ago

In executing tasks no, but in generating assets, art, UI, etc, higher reasoning leads to drastic improvements.

XCSme 6 hours ago

I feel like people use medium models thinking they are saving money, but in the end, it ends up wasting more time and tokens theough the increased rate of issues/bugs.

If the highest tier model makes even one or two fewer mistakes that require human intervantion, that almost makes it a no-brainer choice for production.

spike021 5 hours ago

I've been doing some research lately on my own (aside from the major benchmarking going on) and I've definitely found cases where medium models do much poorly and cost more than the higher models. But on the other hand, if I can give the medium models certain skills or other resources to complete a task then they perform better in cost than the higher model (which, given the same resources, sometimes gets more confused than the medium does).

At least for my use case of evaluations of a set of features.

XCSme 5 hours ago

Yup, in my benchmarks usually medium or high do better than xhigh or max

spider-mario 18 minutes ago

You’re talking about something else (reasoning levels). The parent comment is referring to e.g. GPT Terra as opposed to Luna, Sol or Astra, Claude Sonnet as opposed to Haiku, Opus or Fable, or Gemini Flash/Hydrogen as opposed to Flash-Lite, Argon or Carbon.

Gareth321 5 hours ago

Asking people to guess beforehand how much intelligence they require for a task will hopefully be a relic soon. We’re lacking useful routing techniques which accurately pick the right model for the job. Or a high intelligence model which completes simple tasks fast and cheap. Or something else.

XCSme 5 hours ago

Yeah, an xhigh models should know a task is easy and respond quicker.

selicos 4 hours ago

Even better at the local LLM stage, where QFN can catch a mistake in prior work and patch it without any subscription costs at all. then I can use a cloud model for polish and finish and move on.

I'm building stuff at home with my work focused on managing infra. If anyone wants to sponsor a SOTA model subscription I will check it out. Until then I'll see how flexible a Strix Halo setup and my homelab can be.

viraptor 5 hours ago

I have some tasks that deserve a bit more reasoning but for a long time most of my needs have been met by mid-range models, rather than the big ones. There's barely any motivation for me these days to use something more advanced than Terra on low/medium for everyday work. For a personal agent doing occasional coding, I'm still on Mimo flash.

I think many people still expect their tasks to need something more fancy, but could do with a reset of expectations and try to go much lower.

deaux 5 hours ago

Production pipelines for non-coding usage. Jagged edge is very real. Just one example, loads of tasks where Gemma 4 26ba4b wipes the floor with Deepseek Flash v4.1. On Artificial Analysis-like benchmarks, the latter is many times more "intelligent". Not everything in the world is coding and math, but those are easy to "measure". Things that are hard to measure aren't part of their benchmarks.

whinvik 6 hours ago

The pricing on these models make really little sense. This is $1.5. Argon is $2. Carbon is also $2 for now.

Feel like this pricing only makes sense for a product where you don't even select the model. Maybe Antigravity is like that.

iamdelirium 6 hours ago

Isn't $2 the intro price for Argon and Carbon?

dizhn 6 hours ago

Do you know if Argon and Carbon are also priced the same inside subscriptions?

aizk 6 hours ago

It's starting to feel like OpenAI is in 3rd place now. Really eager to see how / if they can claw their way back up.

vander_elst 6 hours ago

Wait 1 week top, they'll release something soon for sure

jauntywundrkind 5 hours ago

And hopefully this time for them they don't have to release a new rev the week after.

I wonder now that Terra-6 is out how it would compare to Sol-6. (Which was replaced a week latter by sol-6.1 after chat got dropped opus 5.5 to incredible fanfare then sonnet 5.5 that radically upped the medium model ability).

aizk an hour ago

Oh I have no doubt they're working hard. It's just google is going to strangle them on the integration layer if they're not careful.

WarmWash 6 hours ago

All the labs are holding back releases now, not necessarily to play games, but to make sure alignment is right. These models are teetering on the edge of "One person can seriously damage digital infrastructure" and an event like "Teenage kid uses Claude to bring Wells Fargo to it's knees for 6 hours" would be absolutely catastrophic for the whole industry.

IMTDb 5 hours ago

> Teenage kid uses Claude to bring Wells Fargo to it's knees for 6 hours" would be absolutely catastrophic for the whole industry.

It would (rightfully) be catastrophic for wells fargo. And great for the industry. If your security model relies on children not having access to things state actors can leverage, your in for a rude awakening.

deaux 5 hours ago

Then you are in for one too because your personal security relies on that, guaranteed. So does everyone's.

IMTDb 5 hours ago

And the sooner that goes away, the happer I am. My confiendence in the orange dude, Winnie the pooh and their friends is honestly close to 0.

WarmWash 4 hours ago

Right now it's looking like the security model for everyone is "Does or doesn't have access to SOTA LLMs"

Hence why they are gating model releases. Even Chinese models are doing this as Kimi K3 shipped with a lobotomized cyber sec ability. The major labs all have invite only cyber models too.

IMTDb 3 hours ago

> Does or doesn't have access to SOTA LLMs

“Security by availability” doesn’t seem really different to me from “security by obscurity” which has already been proven to be complete bullshit.

matt4711 6 hours ago

I would expect a new release from them soon to climb back up.

objektif 4 hours ago

Heavy user of all models here and Astra is million miles ahead of everything.

Kotlopou 5 hours ago

I have a stupid benchmark: Bongard Problem 2 from here (https://matheminutes.blogspot.com/2019/04/bongard-eggs.html). It's an open-ended visual task that is easy enough for humans, but models are still somewhat bad at visuals, so it's one of the few remaining reliable ways to trigger hallucinations. This one answered correctly, but then felt the need to add a fun fact that was wrong:

> The rule separating the two baskets is layering (which color is on top). Left basket: In every pattern on all six eggs, the blue shape is on top of (overlapping) the green shape. Right basket: In every pattern on all six eggs, the green shape is on top of (overlapping) the blue shape. [true solution]

> (Note: Both baskets contain the exact same distribution of motif counts per egg—two eggs with 2 pairs, three eggs with 3 pairs, and one egg with 4 pairs—serving as a classic Bongard distractor to hide the occlusion rule.) [factually incorrect and also would make no sense as a distractor]

And then trying a harder puzzle just makes it bullshit completely.

I don't understand why Gemini models always add these "it's typical XYZ" bits, which are typically so much worse than everything else in the answer.

rbobby 4 hours ago

The sample problem I kind of gave up on and guessed sort of... it couldn't be sorted by color that's too obvious.

And then the real problem number 1. The answer is "Left - each figure contains an even number of arrow heads. Right - each figure contains an odd number of arrow heads"... but on the right I can clearly see that the three eggs across the top have an even number of arrowheads.

mlmonkey 3 hours ago

It's not the number of arrowheads on the egg; it's the number of arrowheads on each of the little figures on the egg. Those eggs you mention have 2 figures each, true, but each figure has just 1 arrowhead each.

nxtfari 4 hours ago

If you have an Ultra subscription (I don't or I would try it) I would be really curious if Carbon is able to solve your harder Bongard problem without making stuff up given it's absurdly high AA Omniscience non-hallucination score, it's supposed to be like 30%+ better than nearest non-Google competitor. Although Hydrogen xhigh apparently scored within 5% of Carbon so who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Kotlopou 2 hours ago

I don't have that subscription, but for the record, it's this problem: https://imgur.com/a/idyH0Kh

I won't share the solution (you have to keep some mystery in the world), but I showed this a year ago at a high-school reunion and five people independently found the same solution, so it should be well-posed.

ngomezdev 5 hours ago

Wow. On paper this looks like the best Gemini release OAT. They really dialed in the usage and cost issues.

On the AA benchmark it kinda makes Sonnet and Terra look weak. Hopefully that translates to real world usage. Can’t wait to try it out.

jjcm 2 hours ago

I'm very impressed with it as a model for image->html builds. It's the first non-anthropic low-param model that successfully captures complex flows.

Comparisons:

Hydrogen: https://html.non.io/lcars-gemini-4-hydrogen

Sonnet 5.5: https://html.non.io/lcars-sonnet-5.5/

Original designs: https://diffui.ai/app/canvas/5093e689-1e74-4f26-b632-2a4500f...

IMO it sits between sonnet and opus in terms of quality, and is equivalent with gpt sol (for this particular benchmark). Google did a great job with this.

jeremyjjj 6 hours ago

Good they are able to replace Flash. And cool this is available to everyone via search. But I still don’t understand Googles strategy with these new models.

For pro sub, Argon is still very limited and Carbon is only available on Ultra. This is not competitive at all. To say nothing of also being locked into Antigravity.

qnleigh 3 hours ago

How do you actually use hydrogen in the app? The only model selection options I see are "auto," "code and analysis Argon 4" which is paid, and 3 thinking levels.

data-ottawa 4 hours ago

Nice upgrade from 3.8 flash.

My use case benchmarks 37% more expensive per task but 40-60% of the total time per task (median and p90 had the same improvement).

Both models were smart enough to complete all eval tasks, speed was the main thing we were struggling with. Both models on medium reasoning.

Overall feels like a good upgrade.

behat 6 hours ago

The orchestrator in Antigravity might be the most important part of this release. I'm excited that this is being built natively into harnesses.

WarmWash 6 hours ago

I really hope hydrogen keeps the excellent conversational ability of 3.8 flash. For brainstorming or even decoding the dense output of the powerhouse models, flash was a real delight to use. Its the first non-SOTA model that I would actually go to often over the larger models, it was fast, plenty smart enough, and generally wrote really well. Here's to hoping hydrogen keeps that up

deaux 5 hours ago

In the Gemini app of over the API? In the app Ive found it to write poorly, probably a system prompt thing. I've done some stuff with Argon over the API and it wrote well.

modeless 6 hours ago

This is a good blog post because of the graphs comparing directly to Terra and Sonnet for both wall-clock time and cost per task. This is the exact information I'm looking for.

My TL;DR is: seems like a better choice than Sonnet in areas outside of coding, and at high reasoning it's smarter than Terra but somewhat more expensive.

arizen 3 hours ago

Can anyone compare usage allowance on Google subscriptions vs Claude or Codex?

kelvinjps10 5 hours ago

Why all the Ai companies are dropping the names that meant something like flash, mini, pro to these meaningless name. It's very confusing

lp92 4 hours ago

Google's AI product stack was always confusing and this just adds to it.

krmmalik 6 hours ago

I'm really enjoying all these Gemini releases. I know a lot of people keep saying Google is too far behind in the race and that they dropped the ball to early but I don't feel that way at all. I had both Opus and Fable try to find a discreet bug in my codebase and both models assured me I had nothing to worry about and was probably overthinking. Argon was the only model that got to the bottom of the matter and developed the fix for me. I constantly find the Gemini models perform better in the real world as compared to the other frontier models and I also find they have less of the AI-isms that many of us have now come to associate with ChatGPT and Claude. Gemini feels like you're speaking to a comrade. Claude feels like you're speaking to a friend and it's an important distinction I feel.

irthomasthomas 6 hours ago

Qwen 4 Pro preview has been beating fable-5.2 in my tasks. This model is available to try on the free tier. I can't even use argon or carbon on my $10 google sub. Why doesn't google show off their top models with a few free prompts a day to get us hooked? Let the dog see the rabbit.

krmmalik 5 hours ago

Have you tried Antigravity? You should be able to get a chance to play with it for free in there I think.

irthomasthomas 3 hours ago

Yeah, I used to like it, until they dropped pro models. I am on the AI plus tier now and Argon and Carbon are not included.

ChildOfChaos 2 hours ago

Google are doing such a terrible job. They aren't allowing Pro accounts access to this in antigravity that they gave to students or via mobile plans elsewhere, because they messed up badly and don't have the compute. They have been absolutely horrible about communicating this and even gaslighting the users, completely nerfing the same models that they do get to use, without telling them that they are doing.

So after being caught up in this, it's left a very bad taste and I'm subscribing elsewhere.

zf00002 5 hours ago

Oh hey my google workspace account actually got this. It was on like 3.6 and 3.1 for a long time.

BrokenCogs 5 hours ago

I went to geminiIsland[1] and asked for spongebob's, squidward's, and patrick's houses [1] https://geminisland.raph.plus/