I can't tell if they're withholding access to manufacture some sense of scarcity but the delays are really prolonged. I'm nervous to use Gemini models anyway, as its attached to my Google account and I've seen too many people having their whole account banned for dubious reasons (with little recourse).

Also the whole "we're only releasing it to cyber defenders first" framing is weird, is any Gemini model an actual cyber risk?

100%. They don't even suggest a release timeline other than "we look forward to bringing Carbon to developers, businesses, and consumers soon". Claude and GPT-6.x will no doubt have improved versions by the time "soon" comes around.

Has there ever been a product category where a product release is valuable for a shorter time than with LLMs? Trying to build SOTA models seems like it'd be an exhausting hamster wheel to work on.

It doesn't seem possible to actually release frontier models quickly any more. Given their cyber capabilities, playing nice with the powers that be is probably required these days.

They released Argon shortly after announcing it, so I think some benefit of the doubt is reasonable here. They claim they're already evaluating it via the government.

I suspect they're announcing it for two reasons: to get ahead of all the leaks; and because it's earnings report day.

As long as it's from US lab, it'll also have to go through US apparatus.

It's in preview, no?

It makes the best case for why Anthropic isnt worth its potential valuation. Anthropics customers are almost only turbo nerds.

Google has the products, the brand recognition, the hardware, the data and most importantly a billion normies.

Google was always going to win this thing, although I wouldn't discount meta. The only thing that matters is mindshare and Anthropic and OpenAI have largely generated NEGATIVE sentiment, outside some fanboys.

Google and Meta can plop cute products into your daily driver apps and you wont know the difference.