Google is The AI Emperor. Gemini Was The Trojan Horse.
- S B
- Oct 19
- 5 min read
Gemini was initially viewed as inferior to ChatGPT.
How could Google fall behind, people asked?
Was Google no longer a forward-thinking company?
But what if Gemini was never behind other AI chatbots, but rather strategically positioned to appear less competent?
What if Google's Gemini was a modern Trojan Horse?
An AI quietly embedded within billions of devices across Google's ecosystem: Chrome, Android, Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Maps. While everyone, including government regulators, focused their attention on ChatGPT and OpenAI, Google was playing a different game entirely.
I believe Google outsmarted us all by inventing the foundational technology, then letting competitors take the spotlight while they quietly built an unassailable empire.
The Transformer: Google's Gift to the World
The technology that powers ChatGPT and other generative AI breakthroughs is called the transformer. Transformers are a type of computer model that can understand relationships and patterns in language, which allows them to generate text and hold conversations.
Google introduced this breakthrough in 2017 with the publication of a paper called "Attention is All You Need." It's quite a witty title in retrospect, since Google would step away from the "attention" around transformer technology, allowing OpenAI to introduce it to the world in November 2022 with ChatGPT.
ChatGPT was an overnight success.
To the general public, ChatGPT became synonymous with AI itself. OpenAI found itself thrust into a position it could never fulfill: solving humanity's problems with artificial intelligence. But everyone forgot it was simply a young startup with limited resources.
Meanwhile, the Emperor was watching silently in the background.
The First Clue
I was an early adopter of the major AI tools. I remember being baffled at Gemini's inability to maintain a coherent conversation. Then I needed images for an article and stumbled upon Google's real AI strategy.
The tool was ImageFX, an image generator far less known than OpenAI's DALL-E. ImageFX could create everything from illustrations to textured paintings, superior to everything else on the market but without the fanfare.
I received praise for my AI images. People asked: what tool? How? They didn't realize it was possible.
I would reply: Google.
It wasn't just aesthetics. Google's image models were superior at representing people with accuracy and authenticity. They preserved freckles, cultural markers, and showed people across all ages, something competing models simply couldn't do.
In a controlled test where I requested professional women with specific features, competitors erased key details. Glasses vanished, older women became younger, and cultural markers disappeared. ImageFX alone faithfully rendered the request, demonstrating an ability to see and represent humanity with accuracy its rivals lacked.
Google was leading in image generation, quietly.
But this was nothing compared to what came in early summer 2025.
The Reveal of the AI Emperor
If Gemini was the Trojan Horse, then Veo was the empire's coronation.
The release of Veo 3, Google's flagship AI video model, gave the AI industry its second big moment since the arrival of ChatGPT.
Google's video model offered native sound, both dialogue and audio effects. Its physics were superior to competitors. In one release, the company known for search and a bumbling AI chatbot displaced industry leaders in AI video.
The Emperor had shown his cards.
Alongside Veo 3, Google also released updated versions of its image tools that provided more realism, and later in the year the ability to use the same character to create many images.
Google had taken control of the creative AI domain, while everyone was still comparing Gemini's conversations to ChatGPT's personality. The Trojan Horse had delivered its payload, and in its wake stood the world's first true AI studio.
The Empire's Infrastructure
Why would Google invest heavily in creative AI? Creative domains are gateways to storytelling, and storytelling shapes culture. By dominating the creative stack, Google became an AI studio positioned to rival Hollywood and Netflix. Once the public overcomes AI anxiety, entire platforms of AI content will go mainstream.
But while that's future-looking, we need only look at the present to see the reach of the empire.
The Emperor controls both infrastructure and distribution. Google owns YouTube. Google owns Android, installed on over 3 billion devices worldwide. Google owns Chrome, which commands 65% of the browser market. Google owns Gmail with 1.8 billion active users. Google owns Maps. Google owns Search itself.
Each of these platforms served as an unparalleled training ground. YouTube's massive video library became the ultimate teacher for Veo, which is why it was the first model to master native sound. Billions of labeled photos on Google Images became the curriculum for Imagen. This is an advantage that cannot be bought.
Google built the railroads, owns the land, and controls the tolls. They own the data the trains run on. Data that competitors must license to use.
In other words, competing companies pay rent to the Emperor just to operate.
It was never about Gemini's conversational abilities.
The Emperor's Greatest Asset
The Emperor's greatest achievement isn't infrastructure or distribution. It's trust.
Among major AI companies, Google is building AI for humanity. This positioning didn't start with the transformer or Gemini. It traces back to AlphaFold, which revolutionized protein folding prediction in 2020. Its creators won the Nobel Prize in 2024.
Then came the cancer discovery. Google's AI model predicted a drug combination that could make 'cold' tumors visible to the immune system, a novel hypothesis with no prior research. Laboratory experiments validated the prediction: a 50% increase in tumor visibility. AI had shifted from productivity tool to potential lifesaver.
While competitors battled over chatbots, Google built goodwill that made them untouchable.
What regulator wants to target an AI company working to cure cancer?
The Emperor has his shield.
It wasn't just about outsmarting competitors. It was about building a position of such profound societal value that to challenge the empire would be to challenge progress itself.
Intentionality
Of course, some might dismiss this as organizational incompetence, a tech giant simply too slow to productize its own research. But that view falters when you examine the surgical precision of its other AI tools. While Gemini was drawing public scrutiny, Google's image and video models were quietly solving fundamental problems of bias and representation that competitors were failing at spectacularly, a sign of deep intentionality, not neglect.
Gemini Rising
Gemini.
Once seen as inferior, it is now the spokes-AI for the world's first AI Emperor.
Gemini has surpassed benchmarks and leads among models in most tasks.
It's no longer the bumbling AI but the face of a company built on discipline, vision, and strategy. Google had the resources to make Gemini the most conversationally capable chatbot. They chose not to. Holding back Gemini let them strengthen everything else under the radar.
Now the question is: How long will Google reign?
After all, all emperors ultimately meet their destiny.
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"AI is the tool, but the vision is human." — Sophia B.
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About the Author
Sophia Banton works at the intersection of AI strategy, communication, and human impact. With a background in bioinformatics, public health, and data science, she brings a grounded, cross-disciplinary perspective to the adoption of emerging technologies.
Beyond technical applications, she explores GenAI’s creative potential through storytelling and short-form video, using experimentation to understand how generative models are reshaping narrative, communication, and visual expression.
