Listen: Gemma 4 Brand Authority Map
A comparison of brand recall between Google's Gemma 4 and Gemini 3 Flash models, analyzing how open-weight and closed models prioritize different brands.
Transcript
What happens when you ask artificial intelligence to name one hundred brands at random, thousands of times? You get a fascinating look at what these models actually remember, revealing their hidden priorities.
Researchers put this to the test with two of Google’s AI models: the closed, proprietary Gemini, and the open-source Gemma.
While both models agree that Apple is the undisputed number one, their memories quickly diverge. Gemini favors digital-native and luxury brands. It easily recalls names like Netflix, Porsche, and Ferrari. Gemma, on the other hand, leans toward everyday retail and physical goods, frequently naming mass-market brands like H and M, Gap, and Levi’s.
Perhaps the most striking difference is how the models view their creator. Google ranks itself at number four in its closed Gemini model, but drops all the way to seventeenth in the open Gemma model.
These differences suggest that even small changes in training data and model design can drastically shift how an AI views our consumer world—whether it sees a landscape dominated by luxury and tech, or one filled with the practical, everyday brands we see on the street.