Google finally releases Gemini 4 Argon

After months on the sidelines of the frontier AI race, Google has launched its long-awaited Gemini 4 Argon model, claiming it delivers "frontier reasoning and improved performance across complex workflows" while reducing hedging, repetition, and the cliches that plague AI chatbots. Google says Argon outperforms rivals like GPT-6 Astra, Claude Fable 5.1, and Claude Opus 5.5 across benchmarks in coding, cybersecurity, science, finance, and law, and is already used internally for tasks such as patching security vulnerabilities, halving the compute needed for YouTube's comments section, and debugging the drone physics simulator for Alphabet's Wing. The model rolls out today to Pro and Ultra subscribers in the Gemini app and AI mode in Search, as well as Ultra subscribers on Google's agentic development platform Antigravity, though availability for Plus and free users is unclear. Argon launches at an introductory price of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens—roughly a fifth the cost of OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra and Anthropic's Fable 5 model—and will remain significantly cheaper even after prices double at the end of November. The public release follows a limited rollout to select "trusted cyber defenders" for risk testing. As Google's first major frontier release since Gemini 3 in late 2025, Argon arrives after Anthropic and OpenAI models left Google trailing amid internal shakeups, and just a day after Meta announced its own frontier model, Muse Wonder Full—a reminder that the balance of power in AI can shift quickly and the frontier is far from a two-horse race.

(Source：The Verge)