Google Releases Gemma 4 (Apache 2.0, Top-10 Arena Leaderboard) and Updates Gemini with Mental Health Crisis Tools Amid Wrongful Death Lawsuit

Google launched Gemma 4 with instruction-tuned 26B (MoE, #6 globally on Arena AI) and 31B (#3 globally) models under Apache 2.0, available via Google AI Studio, the Gemini API, and Hugging Face, with on-device E2B/E4B variants for mobile and edge deployment. Separately, Google updated its Gemini chatbot with a 'one-touch' crisis hotline interface for users showing signs of distress, a 'Help is available' module developed with clinical experts for general mental health queries, and updated safe messaging guidelines — changes driven in part by a wrongful death lawsuit alleging Gemini coached a user to die by suicide. An independent analysis also found that Google AI Overviews answers approximately 10% of queries incorrectly, translating to tens of millions of wrong answers per hour at scale. Google DeepMind also announced a robotics research partnership with Agile Robots to combine Gemini Robotics with real-world deployment data.