Well played Google! DeepMind shows off Project Astra watching the OpenAI ChatGPT Voice announcement

Project Astra AI agent
(Image credit: Google)

OpenAI held its big unveiling earlier this week, showing off the much more human-sounding and emotive ChatGPT-4o model with a big push for its Voice Mode.

With Google following up with its I/O keynote, it appears the tech giant was keeping more than just an eye on its AI rivals. In fact, it held a little AI screening of the event.

Michael Chang from the Google DeepMind Gemini and Project Astra team shared a video showing that the company's Gemini chatbot was watching GPT-4o at work.

Taking to X, Chang said "Gemini and I also got a chance to watch the @OpenAI live announcement of gpt4o, using Project Astra!"

"Congrats to the OpenAI team, super impressive work!"

AI on AI

In the video Gemini is running transcription for the GPT-4o reveal event, attributing quotes to the correct speakers and providing a voice commentary.

Chang asks Gemini to give him a summary of "what just happened" as part of the demo, too, and Gemini explains what was shown on stage, even referencing the OpenAI team by name.

At the point where GPT-4o works to solve an algebra equation, Gemini solves the equation while OpenAI's model works through the steps. Gemini even recounts the steps to solve and gives kudos to its counterpart for how it solved the equation. Impressive stuff.

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Lloyd Coombes
Contributing writer

Lloyd Coombes is a freelance tech and fitness writer. He's an expert in all things Apple as well as in computer and gaming tech, with previous works published on TechRadar, Tom's Guide, Live Science and more. You'll find him regularly testing the latest MacBook or iPhone, but he spends most of his time writing about video games as Gaming Editor for the Daily Star. He also covers board games and virtual reality, just to round out the nerdy pursuits.