Google has unveiled Gemma 3, the latest addition to its Gemma family of open models, continuing its mission to make AI technology more accessible. Built using the same research and technology behind Gemini 2.0, Gemma 3 is a state-of-the-art, lightweight AI model designed for efficient deployment across a wide range of devices, from mobile phones and laptops to workstations.

Gemma 3 comes in four model sizes—1B, 4B, 12B, and 27B—allowing developers to choose the best fit based on hardware and performance needs. It offers advanced reasoning capabilities, enhanced efficiency, and robust multilingual support while maintaining responsible AI development practices.

Key Features of Gemma 3

1. Optimized AI Performance: Gemma 3 outperforms other existing models such as Llama-405B, DeepSeek-V3, and o3-mini in preliminary human preference evaluations on the LMArena leaderboard, achieving high efficiency on a single GPU or TPU host.
2. Multilingual AI with Global Reach: It supports over 35 languages out of the box and has pretrained capabilities for over 140 languages, making it ideal for global AI applications.
3. Advanced Text and Visual Reasoning: Enhances AI-driven experiences by enabling users to build applications that can analyze text, images, and short videos.
4. Expanded Context Window: With a 128k-token limit, Gemma 3 enable your application to process large datasets and improve its level of understanding.
5. Function Calling for AI Automation: It enables structured AI-driven workflows and seamless task automation.
6. Optimized for Speed with Quantization: Official quantized models reduce size and computational load without compromising accuracy.

Built-in AI Safety: Introducing ShieldGemma 2

Alongside Gemma 3, Google has released ShieldGemma 2, a 4B-parameter image safety checker that detects and labels content in three categories:

1. Dangerous conten
2. Sexually explicit material
3. Violence

Developers can customize safety filters based on specific needs.

The Expanding Gemmaverse

The Gemmaverse is a vast ecosystem of community-created Gemma models and tools, ready to power and inspire your innovation

Some notable projects leveraging Gemma include:

1. SEA-LION v3 by AI Singapore, enhancing multilingual communication across Southeast Asia.
2. BgGPT by INSAIT, a Bulgarian-first large language model showcasing Gemma’s linguistic adaptability.
3. OmniAudio by Nexa AI, bringing on-device AI audio processing to everyday devices.

Supporting AI Research with the Gemma 3 Academic Program

To promote academic breakthroughs, Google has launched the Gemma 3 Academic Program, offering $10,000 in Google Cloud credits per award for researchers working on Gemma 3-based AI innovations. The application period is open for four weeks. Here is the application link (https://ai.google.dev/gemma/)

Here’s how to get started:

Try it instantly in Google AI Studio – no setup required.

Get API access via Google GenAI SDK.

Download models from Hugging Face, Ollama, or Kaggle

Deploy at scale via Vertex AI, NVIDIA NIMs, or Cloud Run.

With Gemma 3, Google continues democratizing AI access, giving developers powerful, efficient, and responsible AI tools to build the next generation of intelligent applications.