Google releases three new AI models
Kate Conger
New York Times·
21 Jul, 2026 08:05 PM2 mins to read
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Google unveiled three new AI models, led by its most powerful Gemini 3.6 Flash. Photo / Getty Images
Google on Tuesday released three new artificial intelligence models, including Gemini 3.6 Flash, its most powerful, and Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber, which is fine-tuned for cyber security.
Google is aiming to compete with rivals such as Anthropic and OpenAI on cutting-edge models and on cyber security, an area in which
the two startups have forged ahead this year with powerful systems that can identify security vulnerabilities in software.
Gemini Flash 3.6 improves on the capabilities of Google’s previous version of Flash, which performed strongly on benchmarks like coding and finance tasks, according to AI leaderboards. The new model is also cheaper for users.
Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber can find and patch security vulnerabilities at a lower cost than other larger models, the company said. The third model, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, is designed for tasks like managing AI “agents”, which are bots that can act autonomously to function like digital personal assistants.
Google has also been working on a flagship AI model called Gemini 3.5 Pro, which is expected to be its highest-performing system. The Silicon Valley company had said in May that Pro would be rolled out in June, but it remains unavailable. Google said Pro was still in testing and would be made “broadly available as soon as it’s ready”.