Google used its own Gemini models and experimental artificial intelligence software to design, build, and run its Google I/O 2026 conference, according to details published by the company. The technology giant applied generative tools across multiple areas of the event, including pre-show interactive experiences, visual branding, stage title cards, and an animated short film.
For the short film titled "TPU Training Day," Google partnered with director Laurie Rowan and Nexus Studios to combine physical puppets and simple 3D animation with AI models. The team used an image model called Nano Banana to generate stylized initial frames from raw footage, alongside a custom tool built inside Google AI Studio to maintain frame consistency. Gemini Omni and experimental DeepMind models then merged the base animation and stylized frames. Google also relied on Gemini and Nano Banana to develop the conference's visual brand identity, which featured flat 2D icons that transformed into textured 3D graphics across physical signage and digital applications.
During the event's pre-show, Google deployed several software experiments. A project named Jellectronica, created with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, tracked moon jellyfish movements using a YOLO8 model running on a Coral NPU chip. That tracking data controlled real-time audio generated through Lyria 3 Pro and Google Flow Music. Another pre-show project, an interactive game called Infinite Scaler, rendered 3D worlds from user text prompts using Nano Banana, the Gemini API, Google AI Studio, and Google Antigravity.
On site at the event, attendees used an app built with Flutter and the A2UI protocol to order lattes with custom art at the Antigravity Coffee Co. pop-up. Speaker title cards were generated using models including Veo, Gemini Omni, and Nano Banana Pro, which depicted executives like Google Labs Vice President Josh Woodward riding the Chrome Dino and dunking a basketball. Google also set up an interactive web game where attendees caught falling prompts with an Android bot to generate personalized physical stickers printed on demand.
