Scientists often use sophisticated technology, so an AI tool designed to help them begin new investigations may see broad take-up among the community. It’s also a hint of how many other workplaces will change via AI.

The company describes the tool as an AI co-scientist. It’s powered by Gemini 2.0, the latest iteration of Google’s flagship large language model family. The LLMs in the series can process multimodal data and have a tool use feature, which allows them to perform actions in external systems such as databases.