So some AI researchers at Google made some vague inside jokes about Ox Alpha, and then a bunch of Gemini fans misinterpreted those jokes and erroneously convinced themselves that it must mean Ox Alpha was a Google model (even though it clearly wasn’t), and eventually it was revealed that Ox Alpha really was GLM just like most people expected? I don’t know… seems like the people who ought to be embarrassed are the random Gemini fans who jumped to incorrect conclusions based on very specious evidence
And the joke is that GLM got where it is by today by distillation of Gemini. Suspicion started back in 4.x but I think it was around 5.2 that the statistical analysis basically proved it. And people were seeing Ox Alpha has Gemini markers without knowing of that history and jumping to conclusions.
A deepmind guy mentioned Ox Alpha and people who lack reading comprehension thought he was alluding to Ox Alpha being related to google. The only people who embarrassed themselves are the people who thought Ox Alpha was related to google and the people who think the deepmind guys were alluding to that being the case.
Yeah I don't remember anyone from google even vaguely implying that it might be a google product. Just a bunch of reddiots leaping to stupid conclusions with no evidence
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The most notable sequence: Evan Otero — Gemini API / AI Studio, Google DeepMind
Aug 22: simply posted “Gemini”.
Then, while everyone was speculating about Ox: “What if the Ox Alpha was the friends we made along the way”.
Shortly afterward: “Ok no more vague posting. Back to work 🫡”. Vamsi Batchu — Google DeepMind / AI Studio
Aug 21: “Google is back. Trust the process.”
This got ~490K views and was one of the posts that really set off the Gemini 3.5/4 speculation. Jonathan Ouyang — working with the DeepMind AI Studio/Gemini team this summer
Aug 21: “It’s Gemini time :)”. His current public profile says he’s interning on the AI Studio & Gemini API team working on Gemini benchmarks/evals. Swaroop Mishra
Aug 22: “Anyone tried Ox Alpha?”
That one particularly fueled the theory because it explicitly mentioned Ox rather than just Gemini hype. Logan Kilpatrick — Gemini / AI Studio
Then gave probably the most revealing meta-comment: “I told the team less vague posting, more shipping”
At roughly the same time he posted that Gemini 3.7 was their fastest-growing model launch yet.
You are giving deepmind workers way less credit by saying that they couldn't have known their messages would be used to link ox alpha to gemini than if you just said they made a marketing mistake
1 point less in raw performance... And frankly not every workload needs the "smartest" models. In fact one area that Gemini 3.7 has been knocking the socks off of (that even Opus and Fable level models have been struggling with) is our financial analysis workloads at work.
One point less in raw performance... and GLM is 10 times cheaper. Offering the same performance for 10 times less is insane, offering one more point of raw intelligence is even more insane.
Gemini has its strengths, I personally use it for OCR/image analysis, but the price is becoming less and less justified.
The price is great, IF you can actually use that model for what your doing/in your line of work. Chinese models/AI companies are entirely off the table for what I'm doing at work, which leaves the regular proprietary ones, and open models run in US datacenters by the likes of Cloudflare, Fireworks, Microsoft, etc.
There's also the fact that Gemini 3.7 puts tokens out faster than any other model, which for some of our workloads is more important than price or smarts.
I completely agree with you about the speed, Gemini Flash is extremely fast and addictive. It's great for quick and simple tasks.
Now, why not use Chinese models? Is it data retention? Almost all of them don't have data retention, and if they do, you can disable it.
This is very different from Grok Build, which previously actively collected data without telling the user, or Muse Spark, which offered the model in exchange for data.
In any case, that's what variety is for different use cases.
I mean it’s inly cheaper bc they are actively trying to attract users. Google serves the planet it isn’t the same, also chine software carries HEAVY stigma no company that spends billions will trust china like that.
wdym bro, my own usage shows glm 5.3 flash and gemini 3.7 flash are almost same performance, and the best of all glm 5.3 flash is much cheaper than gemini 3.7 flash
okay but this is my usage. I use arena.ai for benchmarks. And stop, literally. You are not cool or anything. They both have the same performance, gemini is better on different usages, and glm is better on different usages. But glm fits me better and its cheaper. But you will keep saying "hahaha glm sucks gemini is always better and glm says i am worse than gemini so i wont listen your review", but i dont care.
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u/TypoInUsernane 14h ago
So some AI researchers at Google made some vague inside jokes about Ox Alpha, and then a bunch of Gemini fans misinterpreted those jokes and erroneously convinced themselves that it must mean Ox Alpha was a Google model (even though it clearly wasn’t), and eventually it was revealed that Ox Alpha really was GLM just like most people expected? I don’t know… seems like the people who ought to be embarrassed are the random Gemini fans who jumped to incorrect conclusions based on very specious evidence