In 2017, Google came under fire for inappropriate emojis. This week, CEO Sundar Pichai fixed the issue. How he did this says a lot about Google’s advances in generative AI.
The internet giant launched its latest model, the Gemini 3, on Tuesday, educating the rest of the tech world. Following that, we rolled out an upgraded image generation tool called Nano Banana Pro to create tons of impressive and realistic photos, diagrams, and charts.
Google has proven that the law of AI scaling still holds true. Its rivals are in question. Its stock price soared to record levels, making the company more valuable than Microsoft.
This is all in 2017. At the time, Google rolled out the cheeseburger emoji for Android smartphones. There was cheese in it under meat. An absolute scandal.
I think we need to discuss that Google’s hamburger emoji puts the cheese on the bottom of the burger, while Apple puts the cheese on top. pic.twitter.com/PgXmCkY3Yc
— Thomas Baekdal (@baekdal) October 28, 2017
Pichai apologized and jokingly said Google would work on a fix immediately.
This week sees the launch of Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro.
These new AI models are much better at creating and rendering images. Our understanding of 3D space and how the world physically works has improved significantly and is now completely understandable. nail Cheeseburger stack.
To prove his point, Pichai tweeted an AI-generated image and wrote “iykyk” as a nod to the turmoil of 2017. As you can see, the Earth will return to its correct axis and we can all calm down. The cheese is On top of that meat.
Now, it’s time to get serious. Why am I saying this?
The ability of an AI model to inherently understand where things should be placed in the world is critical.
“AI models typically struggle with spatial orientation, especially the relative position of objects,” Balaji Srinivasan, a tech investor and former CTO of Coinbase, wrote about X after Pichai’s latest burger post. “But this image (when rendered with Gemini 3) seems to solve that problem, as the exact spatial location of the cheese is handled correctly and accurately.”
If an AI model can tell where cheese should go on a burger, it might also be able to tell where something more important should go in the real world. That could mean better machine decision-making in design, engineering, and other areas.
A theoretical example would be the need to install safety fences at appropriate locations at road corners. Perhaps an AI model could guide workers to place this structure in the optimal location precisely down to the millimeter.
There’s one more takeaway from this eight-year cheeseburger saga. Google has been criticized for being behind on generative AI, but this week’s release finally puts those doubts to rest.
It takes many years and a lot of engineering research and plumbing to realize a product as powerful as Gemini 3. Google has been working on this for a very long time, and Pichai has been pushing an AI-first mindset at the company for about a decade. We are now seeing the fruits of these efforts.
“Google really did Abandoning everything they were doing to truly focus on AI. And Gemini 3, at least for now, represents the moment when they really took back the lead,” Srinivasan wrote. “Combined with Thunder, who doubled Google’s revenue to $100 billion, he proved he could take Google to unprecedented heights both technologically and commercially.”
“So iykyk. If you knew, you would know,” he added.
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