Google reveals Gemini 3 Flash to speed up AI search and beefs up image generation
Gemini 3 Flash is now available globally within AI mode for Search.
Google
Google has just announced a new AI model in the Gemini 3 series, one that is focused on speedy responses. Say hello to Gemini 3 Flash, which is claimed to offer “frontier intelligence” and aims to speed up the Google Search experience for users.
What’s the big shift?
Gemini 3 will be integrated within the AI Mode in Search. In case you missed it, AI mode is the new conversational version of Search that is now available as its own mode, alongside the vanilla “blue link” mode, image, news, videos, and shopping, among others.
The whole idea behind AI mode is to give answers just the way you would get them from an AI chatbot like Gemini and ChatGPT, instead of showing traditional web links. Aside from giving you the answer, AI mode also lets you ask follow-up questions in a conversational manner.
With the release of Gemini 3 Flash, AI mode is getting a dual boost. It’s smarter, faster, and the new default for AI Mode in Search as well as the Gemini app. “Gemini 3 Flash’s strong performance in reasoning, tool use and multimodal capabilities enable AI Mode to tackle your most complicated questions with greater precision – without compromising speed,” says Google.
Gemini 3 Flash in AI Mode is now available to all users worldwide. Interestingly, hours ahead of the launch, some keen eyes also spotted its presence in Google’s Vertex AI platform for developers and the Canvas collaboration tool. The anonymous user mentioned on Reddit that it’s much faster than the older Gemini 2.5 Flash model at creating a website using just a prompt.
The more powerful Gemini models are expanding
Aside from introducing the Gemini 3 Flash model, Google is also pushing the Gemini 3 Pro model for all users in the US. When you open AI Mode, you will be able to pick “Thinking with 3 Pro” from the model selector drop-down. Compared to Flash, this one is tailored for more complex queries that require deeper thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving chops.
Gemini 3 Flash demonstrates that speed and scale don’t have to come at the cost of intelligence. 🧠
When processing at the highest thinking level, Gemini 3 Flash is able to modulate how much it thinks. It may think longer for more complex use cases, but it also uses 30% fewer… pic.twitter.com/H4BU59wQSX
— Google (@Google) December 17, 2025
Google is also pushing its most powerful AI image model, Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image), and integrating it within the Search experience. So, whether it is generating image or editing them with text prompts, the results are going to be faster and more accurate.
“For both of these Pro models with AI creation tools, Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers will have higher usage limits,” says the company. On the other side of the competition, OpenAI introduced the GPT 5.2 model for ChatGPT and a next-gen image creation AI model a few days ago.
Nadeem is a technology and science reporter at Digital Trends.
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Watch this humanoid robot power through an hour of sorting packages
Unless you’re a fan of slow TV, we’re not suggesting you sit through the entire 60 minutes.
If you’ve nothing better to do in the run-up to Christmas, then how about enjoying a mesmerizing hour-long video of a humanoid robot sorting packages?
The clip was posted by the founder and CEO of Figure AI, the California-based company behind the Figure humanoid robot.
macOS 26.2 puts a light trick on Macs, and it surprised me in total darkness
For the Mac warriors who prefer darkness, there’s some useful light trick to hunt within macOS 26.2 update.
I just finished a group video call with my siblings in an utterly dark cabin surrounded by pine trees. And for the first time, I didn’t hear a complaint that goes something like “please turn up the brightness, I can’t see your darn face.”
It was the same Mac as usual, my go-to video call app, and a familiar cellular internet situation. The only difference this time around was the new display-driven light fill feature that has arrived with the macOS 26.2 update, which is now rolling out widely to Mac users.
