Company hails ‘major leap forward’ in technology that humans have possessed since infancy
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — In a lavishly produced keynote event watched by millions, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced Thursday that the company’s flagship AI model, Gemini, has achieved what he called “a transformative breakthrough in conversational AI” — the ability to remember what a user said roughly five minutes earlier in the same conversation.
“This changes everything,” said Pichai, standing before a 40-foot screen displaying a demo in which Gemini successfully recalled that a user’s name was Sarah after being told at the beginning of the chat that her name was Sarah. The audience of tech journalists applauded for eleven seconds.
The feature, which Google has branded “Gemini Persistent Context™,” allows the AI to retain key details from earlier in a conversation without asking the user to repeat themselves more than three times. Internal testing showed that Gemini can now hold onto a user’s stated preference — such as “I am allergic to shellfish” — for up to 12 conversational turns before quietly forgetting it and suggesting a shrimp recipe.
“We’ve been building toward this moment for years,” said Gemini product lead James Whitfield during a breakout session. “Previous versions of our model would lose track of the conversation’s topic mid-sentence. Now, in controlled conditions, Gemini can follow a two-part question. We’re incredibly proud.”
Industry analysts were quick to note the significance of the announcement. “This puts Google roughly on par with a golden retriever,” said Forrester analyst Priya Kapoor. “And I mean that as a compliment. Six months ago, Gemini had the contextual awareness of a goldfish with a head injury.”
Google’s internal documentation, portions of which were leaked to the press ahead of the event, reveals that the company spent approximately $2.1 billion and 18 months of engineering effort to achieve what the document describes as “baseline short-term recall functionality,” or what developmental psychologists refer to as “something most toddlers can do.”
The announcement comes just weeks after Google quietly discontinued seven other AI products, including one that was supposed to summarize emails but instead started responding to them, and another that was meant to organize Google Photos but deleted roughly 4,000 images it deemed “not aesthetically pleasing.”
At press time, Gemini had forgotten the entire keynote.
