Well, Google is back. After what seemed

to be like pretty much an eternity stuck

in Flashland, Google has at long last

released Gemini 4 Argon. It is their

flagship frontier model, finally

bringing Google back to like the

competitive arena of Open AI and

Anthropic. I've had a few days to play

around with Gemini 4 in early access. So

today we're going to take a look at some

of the stuff that I built with it, some

stuff that other people have built with

it, and I mean basically answer the

question, did Google cook.

Kicking off, well, I mean, it has been a

hot minute for Google. Actually, last

November was when we first got the

release of Gemini 3. Admittedly, that

was followed up fairly quickly in

February by 3.1 Pro, but I mean, kind of

since then, Google has pretty much been

stuck in flashland. actually at their

big IO event in May, uh we got Gemini

3.5 Flash uh with Sundar basically

telling everyone that 3.5 Pro was on its

way. But as the months dragged on, well,

I mean, all we got was more Flash

updates. Actually, we got four Flash

updates in 100 days. I mean, all of

which is to say, I think a lot of us

felt like Google had pretty much lost

the thread. But behind the scenes, they

were cooking. And as of today, they're

back. uh skipping out on 3.5 and going

directly to four surnamed Argon. Still

think there's a missed opportunity here

and they should have named it Aragon.

Now there is a very nice surprise in all

of this because uh Gemini 4 Argon will

not only be available to like the Ultra

users but the pro users as well. So

yeah, basically the $20 a month users

get access to the latest model. And you

know what even better, they did not

introduce a $500 plan. So, well, thank

you for that, Google. And you know what?

I mean, Gemini 4 Argon, it's pretty

good, boasting all of the big benchmark

scores that were previously published.

Um, to be honest, I don't really put a

lot of stock in this, but you know,

obviously all of the numbers say our

model is better than your model. Uh,

that said, there is a 1 million unified

token limit with uh a continuation

protocol for long jobs that's built into

Argon. Plus, you know, we got all of the

standard harder, faster, better,

stronger type hype press that you get

with any new major model release. Hour

after hour, work is never over. You

didn't think I was going to leave that

hanging, did you? Now, as for usage,

well, I mean, kind of typical for

Google. Uh, it's pretty much available

anywhere Gemini is. So, Gemini web um or

the desktop app or uh on anti-gravity.

We'll talk a bit more about that a

little later on uh with some information

that I got from a call that I was on

with Google. Uh but in the meantime, I

mean, I pretty much ran Argon as like my

daily driver for about a week. Mostly I

was using anti-gravity. So, funny

enough, if you watch the channel

regularly, uh you've actually already

seen it in action. Overall, I'll say it

is very good and very tenacious. Uh

we're going to get to that stuff in a

second as well, but in the meantime,

well, here's a fun one that I cooked up

for today. So AI versus aliens is is a

silly little vibecoded game that I put

together. Uh turnbased isometric game.

You can kind of think of it as like Sim

City meets plants versus zombies with a

little tower defense thrown in.

Conceptually, the idea here is that

we're on the eve of ASI completely

wiping out humanity, except aliens

invade. Humanity and the AI overlord

only have each other to count on in

order to survive the alien attack. Uh

actually, you know, it is kind of a fun

little game. Although I do have to work

a bit more on like the mechanics of it.

It does it is a little bit too easy

right now. The game itself was actually

built in GDAU. Uh that is the free game

engine. Uh Argon is driving it. And for

the assets, well, they were all created

in Blender. Uh once again, Argon driving

that. I'll say there were some nice

little touches thrown in here, including

like that tilt shift uh on the zoomin

camera. I thought that was actually I

think it actually ended up looking

pretty nice overall as kind of a proof

of concept. I mean, I actually think it

ends up being a lot of fun. The gameplay

loop actually works, uh, with you having

a minute to, you know, shore up your

defenses and manage your resources, uh,

and then survive essentially a wave of

oncoming alien attack. Simultaneously,

you have to do some resource management

in keeping the human population happy

by, you know, creating apartments,

parks, and hospitals. Uh, but at the

same time, uh, keeping the ASI happy by

building data centers and powering

everything. But I will say I mean a lot

of essentially the mechanics of the game

itself was something that you know I

came up with during implementation uh

through Argon. So actually one thing

that we were concepting that uh I

actually totally forgot about was the

endgame state. At this point it's just

after wave six but uh when that happens

and you've won well the ASI turns all of

its cannons onto the town and then like

decimates it. Yeah, it's a pretty dark

ending. Even if you win, you lose. Uh

Argon thought that was pretty funny. The

other thing that I built out actually

just for fun is a polyonic synthesizer

essentially to have all of my uh synth

wave and cyberpunk soundtrack fun. Uh

now these have been built a few times in

the past, but uh I kind of wanted to

throw in a little bit of extra spank. So

not only do we have all of our like

typical synth sounds up here, but we

have uh our oscillators up here as well.

So uh you can do stuff like this.

[music]

The other thing that I wanted to do is

to put a looper in here as well. So, we

have a five track looper over here as

well and a drum machine as well. So, uh

let's give the whole thing a listen.

[music]

>> [music]

>> If you've ever played around with those

since, I mean, you know, that's just

hours of knob tweaking fun. Uh, come to

think of it, if you have like a cheap,

you know, $99 keyboard, too, uh, you

could definitely route this all to MIDI

and just, you know, use one of these as

well to twist your knobs. Additionally,

as mentioned, if you do watch the

channel pretty regularly, uh Doom Guy in

Skyrim, uh I couldn't say it at the

time, but yeah, the uh implementation of

that was handled by Argon. Uh I do want

to note that both the uh polyonic synth

and Doom guy here, uh these were both

done as one-shot prompts. Um we'll talk

about that a little bit more later on.

Um, you know, and again, since I paid

$13 for Skyrim, uh, I figured another

pretty fun test for Argon might be to

make Skyrim as pretty as it can possibly

look. And I mean, it it took the job

pretty seriously. Um, and indeed, I

mean, Skyrim looks very good here. Now,

this is like a whole collection of mods.

What I ended up using here was the uh

slashgoal mode, which is, you know, you

give it a prompt and uh when you do back

or forward slashgoal, uh it just it just

goes ham and just starts uh starts doing

everything pretty much unattended until

the goal is complete. And you can see

actually via my Chrome tabs here. I left

them open. Um these are all of the mods.

It just downloaded on its own. Like it

just I mean I left it alone overnight

and it just went to town. But at the end

of the day, it does look really good. uh

just you know be careful about killing

chickens in Riverrun otherwise the

entire town aggros against you and the

only way out is to essentially murder

everyone. The other place that you have

already seen Argon in action is actually

in my last video. The entire interview

that I did with Jav Lopez was actually

cut together with uh Argon. Yeah, sorry.

It's just a bunch of red clips now

because apparently I already deleted all

the source material. Uh but yeah, I just

hooked up Argon via the MCP to Da Vinci

and uh essentially gave it all the

footage, gave it a brief and and let it

run. Um it managed to take an hour and a

half long conversation and actually

through two prompts cut it down to a

10-minute interview. Where I

additionally found it extremely helpful

was, you know, while I was cutting the a

section of the video, um, I could just

send it out to go pull clips that I knew

that the interview needed, uh, and then

start placing them in as well. Now, I

did have to go through and do

essentially a producer pass on this

afterwards and say like, no, use this

image here or like move this a little

bit further this way. But, you know, for

the most part, I mean, it it did end up

saving me a ton of time. Now, I do want

to stress that was just for the

interview segment and in fact I am

manually editing this video as well as

good as like aentic editing has gotten.

I still like ultimately uh I you know

I'm I'm still faster at least for now.

Now, one thing I definitely want to hit

here and actually something that I think

does get overlooked a lot in these types

of videos is as a writer uh Argon is

pretty good. Case in point, um I've

actually been stuck a bit of a story

slog with Planet Hell, which a lot of

you probably do remember. This was my AI

film trailer that I made actually back

in the VO3.1 days. So, kind of weirdly

keeping it in the family. Um, so you

know, last time uh I I took them into an

LLM to use as a writer room, well, it

was Opus 4.8 and well, what Opus ended

up doing was this. So, this is the

Obsidian graph uh of the folder. I mean,

it just made a giant mess. Um, it just

over complicated everything and was

making rules upon rules. I mean, it was

just it's it was a total disaster. It

ended up confusing itself. It ended up

confusing me. Uh and then I ended up

shelving the project for I mean this

thing is just insane. Yeah, it ended up

shelving the project cuz uh yeah, again

I just I got totally lost in this thing.

So I am really happy to say that Gemini

4 did a really stellar job. Look, it

isn't writing the script, but it did a

great job of organizing uh a lot of my

original notes and kind of, you know,

finding uh you know, the thread through

the chaos of notes and even actually

found a couple of story threads that I

didn't realize I put in there. So, I am

happy to report it is now back in

production. Actually, here's a quick

little preview of what we've been

cooking up.

Yeah, pretty excited to wrap this and

get this out to you guys. Um, but you

know, going back to the writing side.

So, I was on a call with the Google

Bigwigs uh yesterday and Josh Woodward,

who I actually did a kung fu battle with

once. Um, yeah, he's he's he's fairly

deadly actually. Um, well, he mentioned

that they actually spent a lot of time

revamping essentially how Gemini 4

writes. So, his promise is that with

Argon, you're not going to be getting

those writing habits of like it's not X,

it's Y from this model. And I will say,

and granted, I mean, we are in the

honeymoon phase right now, but overall,

I mean, vibes wise, I really do enjoy

working with Argon. Um it is uh

definitely a lot easier to work with

than say like you know Claude when

Claude decides to go like snoody waiter

and a little on the combative side.

Generally I do find Argon um works well

at trying to communicate with you and uh

additionally you know uh like it tries

to understand exactly what you're trying

to communicate. From my experience it

might not be the oneshot miracle worker

that you know seems to be a personal

benchmark for people on social media.

Um, you know, you might have to take a

couple of passes at things. Um, you

know, it, you know, things are going to

need some massaging, but to be honest, I

mean, I think the whole oneshot

phenomenon is actually a little

overplayed at this point. Um, you know,

it's like prompt make it awesome, no

mistakes. I mean, that's kind of just

lazy on the human part. We should be

iterating, massaging, and tweaking

because, well, I mean, that that's the

human part. Now, one thing I will

definitely say about that million token

context is that it does feel very roomy.

I mean, I'm not sure what they're doing

in the back end in terms of like

compaction or in terms of how Argon is

routing requests and deciding how much

to like spend on any given task, but I

will say that unlike Claude, uh it never

gives me the whole like, "Hey man, we

we've been working for a while. You want

to you want to maybe uh get some rest

tonight? Call it a night and we pick

this up tomorrow?" I'm like, "Claude, it

is 300 p.m. Get back to work." Now, as

always, is it perfect? No, it is not. I

mean, there's always room for

improvement. uh as Peter Yang showcases

here on the design front uh I mean like

of the four outputs here I mean Gemini's

does look a little bit on the cramped

side Ethan Mollik had a pretty

interesting uh comparison here using

Argon to create like essentially like a

3D model of a uh brutalist city. I mean

you know I think that this does look

pretty neat and cool. Um that said,

Fable 5.1's output of essentially this,

you know, the same uh concept here um

does kind of have a little bit more like

uh spit and polish to it. Um just, you

know, I mean, I know that it's

subjective, but I mean also it looks

better. That said, sometimes that polish

can be a little deceptive. Uh it's Mike

Taylor actually put together, you know,

kind of this like Paper Boy clone. Um

this one is in Opus 5.5 and it looks

good. I'm going to be terrible at this

game, by the way. I was actually never

really good at the original paper boy

either. So, let's like get that guy and

get that guy. Um, so, but I mean, you

kind of get the overall vibe here. It's

like it it does it looks nice for like a

quick little vibe cody thing. Um, so

running that same thing in Argon. Now,

the Argon version of this on first

glance does not look uh as good until

you realize like there is like mouse

aiming abilities in here and just like a

there's just like so much more

interactivity going on. Uh it is

including ramps at the end. Um overall

it just is actually made it through the

level. Wow. Um overall it's just a it's

a more fun game. So while bringing it up

to pretty might take a few more passes

and actually I would suggest uh using

GDO uh if you're interested in you know

just kind of vibe coding out some games

with basically any of the models. But

again I think that when you have the

underlying game mechan the fun part of

the game um that's going to lead to a

better experience. Now, as I'm sure a

lot of you are wondering is that, you

know, now that Gemini 4 has been

released, you know, are we going to see

Nano Banana 2 Pro or three or like

whatever they're going to call it? Well,

of course, while I was on that call, I

did have to ask them. So, the official

answer is soon. But for a less official

answer, uh Mars for Tech actually points

out uh November or December with code

spotted for uh Gemix 3 Pro. Again, that

is totally unofficial, though. But it is

a no-brainer that now with the release

of Gemini 4, we'll see a refresh across

a lot of the Google product line. So,

yeah, Big Daddy G ain't done cooking

yet. And look, any way that you look at

it, this is a very nice return to form

for Google, and I am excited to see what

comes out in the wake of Gemini 4. As

always, I thank you for watching. My

name is Tim.