Google co-founder Sergey Brin says in rare public appearance that company 'definitely messed up' Gemini image launch

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in a rare public appearance over the weekend, told a group of artificial intelligence enthusiasts that he came out of retirement "because the trajectory of AI is so exciting."

Brin, 50, spoke to entrepreneurs on Saturday at the "AGI House" in Hillsborough, California, just south of San Francisco, where developers and founders were testing Google's Gemini model. AGI stands for artificial general intelligence and refers to a form of AI that can complete tasks to the same level, or a step above, humans.

In taking questions from the crowd, Brin discussed AI's impact on search and how Google can maintain its leadership position in its core market as AI continues to grow. He also commented on the flawed launch last month of Google's image generator, which the company pulled after users discovered historical inaccuracies and questionable responses.

“We definitely messed up on the image generation,” Brin said on Saturday. “I think it was mostly due to just not thorough testing. It definitely, for good reasons, upset a lot of people.”

Google said last week that it plans to relaunch the image generation feature soon.

Brin co-founded Google with Larry Page in 1998, but stepped down as president of Alphabet in 2019. He remains a board member and a principal shareholder, with a stake in the company worth about $100 billion. He's returned to work at the company as part of an effort to help ramp up Google's position in the hypercompetitive AI market.

In some cases on Saturday, Brin said he was giving "personal" answers, as opposed to representing the company.

“Seeing what these models can do year after year is astonishing,” he said at the event, a recording of which was viewed by CNBC.

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