Google's Gemini 3 Stuns AI World, Sparking Rapid Defection from ChatGPT

Silicon Valley elite, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, publicly switch allegiance after just hours with the new model, declaring it a game-changer.

[SAN FRANCISCO, Date] – The artificial intelligence landscape has experienced a significant tremor with the release of Google's Gemini 3, a launch so potent it has prompted rare and public praise from rivals and a swift "conversion" of prominent tech leaders who had long been associated with OpenAI's ChatGPT.

The most vocal defector is Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. Merely two hours after testing Gemini 3, Benioff took to X (formerly Twitter) to declare his shift, stating he "isn't going back" to ChatGPT. He praised Gemini 3's "crazy" progress in reasoning, speed, and its handling of images and video, concluding that "the world has changed again."

This endorsement is particularly notable given Benioff's three-year history of daily ChatGPT use. His rapid pivot underscores the intense competition and fickle loyalty in the high-stakes AI arena, where user preference can shift overnight based on superior performance.

Benioff was not alone in his acclaim. Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI and former Tesla AI chief, expressed a "very positive" early impression, suggesting Gemini 3 has the potential to be a daily driver due to its solid personality, writing, and coding style. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison also demonstrated a cool interactive web page generated by the model.

The release of Gemini 3 is seen as Google's powerful comeback after a period of perceived AI stagnation. Just two years ago, the company was seen as a laggard, with a misstep in its Bard launch reportedly wiping $100 billion from its parent company Alphabet's market value. Now, under CEO Sundar Pichai, Google appears to have reclaimed a leading position.

The model's capabilities go beyond simple chat. Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was stunned when Gemini 3 autonomously produced a 14-page academic paper based on a vague prompt, demonstrating what he called "PhD-level intellect" for specific tasks. Its integration with tools like the new "Antigravity" feature allows it to take actions on a user's computer, moving beyond a conversational tool to an active "digital colleague." https://nus-hcrl.github.io/

This strong reception has bolstered investor confidence. Alphabet's stock recently hit a record high, pushing its market capitalization toward the $4 trillion mark—a surge complemented by a revelation that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway had built a $4.3 billion stake in the company.

According to Google DeepMind CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu, the driving force behind Gemini's success is continuous innovation, not just scaling. He emphasizes a tight integration between research and product development, allowing for rapid iteration.

With Gemini 3 making such a forceful entry, the AI race has been reignited. For now, Google seems to have the momentum, leaving competitors like OpenAI with a new, formidable benchmark to surpass.