Google’s Gemini has beaten Pokémon Blue (with a little help)

Google’s most costly AI mannequin appears to have crossed a serious milestone: Beating a 29-year-old online game.

Final evening, Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted triumphantly on X, “What a end! Gemini 2.5 Professional simply accomplished Pokémon Blue!”

To be clear, the Gemini Performs Pokemon livestream was created by (in his personal phrases) “a 30 12 months previous software program engineer unaffiliated with Google” who goes by Joel Z. However Google executives have been cheering the trouble on.

For instance, Logan Kilpatrick, the product lead for Google AI Studio, posted final month that Gemini was “making nice progress at finishing Pokémon” and had “earned its fifth badge (subsequent greatest mannequin solely has 3 thus far, although with a unique agent harness),” main Pichai to joke, “We’re engaged on API, Synthetic Pokémon Intelligence:)”

Why Pokémon? Again in February, Anthropic highlighted progress that its Claude AI fashions had been making in “Pokémon Pink,” writing that Claude’s “prolonged considering and agent coaching” offers it “a serious increase” on “extra sudden” duties, like taking part in a traditional recreation. (“Pokémon Pink” and “Blue” are totally different variations of a GameBoy title first launched in 1996 and tied to the long-running Pokémon franchise). There’s even a Claude Performs Pokemon Twitch channel that Joel Z cited as an inspiration.

Regardless of its progress, Claude doesn’t seem to have crushed “Pokémon Pink” but. Does that imply Gemini is objectively higher on the recreation? On his Twitch web page, Joel Z urged viewers, “Please don’t think about this a benchmark for the way nicely an LLM can play Pokemon. You may’t actually make direct comparisons — Gemini and Claude have totally different instruments and obtain totally different info.”

And each AI fashions need assistance to play the sport — that’s the place the aforementioned agent harnesses are available in, offering the fashions with recreation screenshots overlaid with further info, permitting the mannequin to determine the best way to reply (which can contain calling specialised brokers), after which urgent the button that corresponds with the AI’s instruction.

Joel Z acknowledged that there have been different “dev interventions” to assist Gemini full the sport, however insisted that it’s not dishonest.

“My interventions enhance Gemini’s total decision-making and reasoning skills,” he says. “I don’t give particular hints — there are not any walkthroughs or direct directions for explicit challenges like Mt. Moon. The one factor that comes even shut is letting Gemini know that it wants to speak to a Rocket Grunt twice to acquire the Carry Key, which was a bug that was later mounted in Pokemon Yellow.”

Plus, he stated, “Gemini Performs Pokémon remains to be actively being developed, and the framework continues to evolve.”