Gemini Enhances I/O 2025 Puzzle Experience

Since 2008, Google I/O has been a big deal for us, not just to show off our latest tech but to share where we see the future heading and to get up close and personal with the developer community.

The first thing we spilled the beans on? The date! We let everyone know that I/O 2025 is happening on May 20-21 at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. And, sticking to our usual fun, we announced it with our yearly "Save the date" puzzle.

This year's puzzle is all about playing with light. You gotta manipulate, guide, reflect, and split beams to light up hidden beacons. It's all about placing prisms and mirrors just right to bend those laser beams towards nodes, which then unlocks new parts of the map. As you keep going, the puzzles get trickier, opening up new worlds, each with its own vibe and color scheme. The big finale? Lighting up a final prism to reveal the I/O date.

“Prisms and mirrors are key in quantum computing, helping to mess with light and quantum states,” says Kacey Fahey, a senior product marketing manager working on I/O ‘25. "We got the idea for this year's puzzle from that, challenging folks to use reflections and refractions to crack these puzzles. Plus, there's more than one way to solve each level, so you can keep trying different things and playing over and over."

We've added a new twist this year with a side quest to unlock bonus worlds. When each level starts, a feature powered by the Gemini API tucks away a secret tile on the board and gives you a riddle to find it. Crack Gemini’s riddles, and you'll unlock bonus worlds that look like Chrome Dino, Android, and other cool stuff.

“Everyone gets their own unique riddle to hunt down a hidden tile," says Jay Chang, a senior product marketing manager who spearheaded the Gemini integration. “Google AI Studio made it a breeze to add this feature in a fun, creative way. We used code to generate prompts for Gemini 1.5 Flash, letting it come up with the riddles. Sure, we could've done it by hand, but this way was way faster."

The team's hoping this playful use of AI will get more folks excited about building with Gemini. “We also want the puzzle to ramp up the excitement for I/O,” Kacey says. “We've got tons of cool demos and new stuff to check out this year, and we'll be streaming more sessions live to keep our global audience in the loop over both days. And now, the countdown's on!”