Google DeepMind chief says Gemini 4 is in refinement, aiming to launch 'much earlier' than year-end

What happened

- Koray Kavukcuoglu, in his first media appearance as head of Google's DeepMind division, told The Information that Gemini 4 is in its refinement stage (The Verge). - He said Google aims to launch the model 'much earlier' than the end of the year, and that the company intends to release an early post-training output as soon as possible. - The Verge frames the timing as Google catching up after lagging rival developers on flagship AI releases. - No launch date, specifications, benchmark results, or pricing were reported. [1]