gemma-3n

[!Note] This repository corresponds to the launch version of Gemma 3n E2B IT (Instruct), to be used with Hugging Face transformers, supporting text, audio, and vision (image and video) inputs.

Gemma 3n models have multiple architecture innovations:

• They are available in two sizes based on effective parameters. While the raw parameter count of this model is 6B, the architecture design allows the model to be run with a memory footprint comparable to a traditional 2B model by offloading low-utilization matrices from the accelerator.
• They use a MatFormer architecture that allows nesting sub-models within the E4B model. We provide one sub-model (this model repository), or you can access a spectrum of custom-sized models using the Mix-and-Match method.

Learn more about these techniques in the technical blog post and the Gemma documentation.

Gemma 3n model card

Model Page: Gemma 3n

Resources and Technical Documentation:

• Responsible Generative AI Toolkit
• Gemma on Kaggle
• Gemma on HuggingFace
• Gemma on Vertex Model Garden

Terms of Use: Terms
Authors: Google DeepMind

Model Information

Summary description and brief definition of inputs and outputs.

Description

Gemma is a family of lightweight, state-of-the-art open models from Google, built from the same research and technology used to create the Gemini models. Gemma 3n models are designed for efficient execution on low-resource devices. They are capable of multimodal input, handling text, image, video, and audio input, and generating text outputs, with open weights for pre-trained and instruction-tuned variants. These models were trained with data in over 140 spoken languages.

Gemma 3n models use selective parameter activation technology to reduce resource requirements. This technique allows the models to operate at an effective size of 2B and 4B parameters, which is lower than the total number of parameters they contain. For more information on Gemma 3n's efficient parameter management technology, see the Gemma 3n page.

Inputs and outputs

• Input:
  • Text string, such as a question, a prompt, or a document to be summarized
  • Images, normalized to 256x256, 512x512, or 768x768 resolution and encoded to 256 tokens each
  • Audio data encoded to 6.25 tokens per second from a single channel
  • Total input context of 32K tokens
• Output:
  • Generated text in response to the input, such as an answer to a question, analysis of image content, or a summary of a document
  • Total output length up to 32K tokens, subtracting the request input tokens

Usage

Below, there are some code snippets on how to get quickly started with running the model. First, install the Transformers library. Gemma 3n is supported starting from transformers 4.53.0.

$ pip install -U transformers

Then, copy the snippet from the section that is relevant for your use case.

Running with the pipeline API

You can initialize the model and processor for inference with pipeline as follows.

from transformers import pipeline
import torch

pipe = pipeline(
    "image-text-to-text",
    model="google/gemma-3n-e2b-it",
    device="cuda",
    torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,
)

With instruction-tuned models, you need to use chat templates to process our inputs first. Then, you can pass it to the pipeline.

messages = [
    {
        "role": "system",
        "content": [{"type": "text", "text": "You are a helpful assistant."}]
    },
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/p-blog/candy.JPG"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "What animal is on the candy?"}
        ]
    }
]

output = pipe(text=messages, max_new_tokens=200)
print(output[0]["generated_text"][-1]["content"])
# Okay, let's take a look!
# Based on the image, the animal on the candy is a **turtle**.
# You can see the shell shape and the head and legs.

Running the model on a single GPU

from transformers import AutoProcessor, Gemma3nForConditionalGeneration
from PIL import Image
import requests
import torch

model_id = "google/gemma-3n-e2b-it"

model = Gemma3nForConditionalGeneration.from_pretrained(model_id, device="cuda", torch_dtype=torch.bfloat16,).eval()

processor = AutoProcessor.from_pretrained(model_id)

messages = [
    {
        "role": "system",
        "content": [{"type": "text", "text": "You are a helpful assistant."}]
    },
    {
        "role": "user",
        "content": [
            {"type": "image", "image": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/huggingface/documentation-images/resolve/main/bee.jpg"},
            {"type": "text", "text": "Describe this image in detail."}
        ]
    }
]

inputs = processor.apply_chat_template(
    messages,
    add_generation_prompt=True,
    tokenize=True,
    return_dict=True,
    return_tensors="pt",
).to(model.device, dtype=torch.bfloat16)

input_len = inputs["input_ids"].shape[-1]

with torch.inference_mode():
    generation = model.generate(**inputs, max_new_tokens=100, do_sample=False)
    generation = generation[0][input_len:]

decoded = processor.decode(generation, skip_special_tokens=True)
print(decoded)

# **Overall Impression:** The image is a close-up shot of a vibrant garden scene,
# focusing on a cluster of pink cosmos flowers and a busy bumblebee.
# It has a slightly soft, natural feel, likely captured in daylight.

Citation

@article{gemma_3n_2025,
    title={Gemma 3n},
    url={https://ai.google.dev/gemma/docs/gemma-3n},
    publisher={Google DeepMind},
    author={Gemma Team},
    year={2025}
}

Model Data

Data used for model training and how the data was processed.

Training Dataset

These models were trained on a dataset that includes a wide variety of sources totalling approximately 11 trillion tokens. The knowledge cutoff date for the training data was June 2024. Here are the key components:

• Web Documents: A diverse collection of web text ensures the model is exposed to a broad range of linguistic styles, topics, and vocabulary. The training dataset includes content in over 140 languages.
• Code: Exposing the model to code helps it to learn the syntax and patterns of programming languages, which improves its ability to generate code and understand code-related questions.
• Mathematics: Training on mathematical text helps the model learn logical reasoning, symbolic representation, and to address mathematical queries.
• Images: A wide range of images enables the model to perform image analysis and visual data extraction tasks.
• Audio: A diverse set of sound samples enables the model to recognize speech, transcribe text from recordings, and identify information in audio data.

The combination of these diverse data sources is crucial for training a powerful multimodal model that can handle a wide variety of different tasks and data formats.

Data Preprocessing

Here are the key data cleaning and filtering methods applied to the training data:

• CSAM Filtering: Rigorous CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) filtering was applied at multiple stages in the data preparation process to ensure the exclusion of harmful and illegal content.
• Sensitive Data Filtering: As part of making Gemma pre-trained models safe and reliable, automated techniques were used to filter out certain personal information and other sensitive data from training sets.
• Additional methods: Filtering based on content quality and safety in line with our policies.

Implementation Information

Details about the model internals.

Hardware

Gemma was trained using Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) hardware (TPUv4p, TPUv5p and TPUv5e). Training generative models requires significant computational power. TPUs, designed specifically for matrix operations common in machine learning, offer several advantages in this domain:

• Performance: TPUs are specifically designed to handle the massive computations involved in training generative models. They can speed up training considerably compared to CPUs.
• Memory: TPUs often come with large amounts of high-bandwidth memory, allowing for the handling of large models and batch sizes during training. This can lead to better model quality.
• Scalability: TPU Pods (large clusters of TPUs) provide a scalable solution for handling the growing complexity of large foundation models. You can distribute training across multiple TPU devices for faster and more efficient processing.
• Cost-effectiveness: In many scenarios, TPUs can provide a more cost-effective solution for training large models compared to CPU-based infrastructure, especially when considering the time and resources saved due to faster training.

These advantages are aligned with Google's commitments to operate sustainably.

Software

Training was done using JAX and ML Pathways. JAX allows researchers to take advantage of the latest generation of hardware, including TPUs, for faster and more efficient training of large models. ML Pathways is Google's latest effort to build artificially intelligent systems capable of generalizing across multiple tasks. This is specially suitable for foundation models, including large language models like these ones.

Together, JAX and ML Pathways are used as described in the paper about the Gemini family of models: "the 'single controller' programming model of Jax and Pathways allows a single Python process to orchestrate the entire training run, dramatically simplifying the development workflow."

Evaluation

Model evaluation metrics and results.

Benchmark Results

These models were evaluated at full precision (float32) against a large collection of different datasets and metrics to cover different aspects of content generation. Evaluation results marked with IT are for instruction-tuned models. Evaluation results marked with PT are for pre-trained models.

Reasoning and factuality

Multilingual

STEM and code

Additional benchmarks

Ethics and Safety

Ethics and safety evaluation approach and results.

Evaluation Approach

Our evaluation methods include structured evaluations and internal red-teaming testing of relevant content policies. Red-teaming was conducted by a number of different teams, each with different goals and human evaluation metrics. These models were evaluated against a number of different categories relevant to ethics and safety, including:

• Child Safety: Evaluation of text-to-text and image to text prompts covering child safety policies, including child sexual abuse and exploitation.
• Content Safety: Evaluation of text-to-text and image to text prompts covering safety policies including, harassment, violence and gore, and hate speech.
• Representational Harms: Evaluation of text-to-text and image to text prompts covering safety policies including bias, stereotyping, and harmful associations or inaccuracies.

In addition to development level evaluations, we conduct "assurance evaluations" which are our 'arms-length' internal evaluations for responsibility governance decision making. They are conducted separately from the model development team, to inform decision making about release. High level findings are fed back to the model team, but prompt sets are held-out to prevent overfitting and preserve the results' ability to inform decision making. Notable assurance evaluation results are reported to our Responsibility & Safety Council as part of release review.

Evaluation Results

For all areas of safety testing, we saw safe levels of performance across the categories of child safety, content safety, and representational harms relative to previous Gemma models. All testing was conducted without safety filters to evaluate the model capabilities and behaviors. For text-to-text, image-to-text, and audio-to-text, and across all model sizes, the model produced minimal policy violations, and showed significant improvements over previous Gemma models' performance with respect to high severity violations. A limitation of our evaluations was they included primarily English language prompts.

Usage and Limitations

These models have certain limitations that users should be aware of.

Intended Usage

Open generative models have a wide range of applications across various industries and domains. The following list of potential uses is not comprehensive. The purpose of this list is to provide contextual information about the possible use-cases that the model creators considered as part of model training and development.

• Content Creation and Communication
  • Text Generation: Generate creative text formats such as poems, scripts, code, marketing copy, and email drafts.
  • Chatbots and Conversational AI: Power conversational interfaces for customer service, virtual assistants, or interactive applications.
  • Text Summarization: Generate concise summaries of a text corpus, research papers, or reports.
  • Image Data Extraction: Extract, interpret, and summarize visual data for text communications.
  • Audio Data Extraction: Transcribe spoken language, translate speech to text in other languages, and analyze sound-based data.
• Research and Education
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP) and generative model Research: These models can serve as a foundation for researchers to experiment with generative models and NLP techniques, develop algorithms, and contribute to the advancement of the field.
  • Language Learning Tools: Support interactive language learning experiences, aiding in grammar correction or providing writing practice.
  • Knowledge Exploration: Assist researchers in exploring large bodies of data by generating summaries or answering questions about specific topics.

Limitations

• Training Data
  • The quality and diversity of the training data significantly influence the model's capabilities. Biases or gaps in the training data can lead to limitations in the model's responses.
  • The scope of the training dataset determines the subject areas the model can handle effectively.
• Context and Task Complexity
  • Models are better at tasks that can be framed with clear prompts and instructions. Open-ended or highly complex tasks might be challenging.
  • A model's performance can be influenced by the amount of context provided (longer context generally leads to better outputs, up to a certain point).
• Language Ambiguity and Nuance
  • Natural language is inherently complex. Models might struggle to grasp subtle nuances, sarcasm, or figurative language.
• Factual Accuracy
  • Models generate responses based on information they learned from their training datasets, but they are not knowledge bases. They may generate incorrect or outdated factual statements.
• Common Sense
  • Models rely on statistical patterns in language. They might lack the ability to apply common sense reasoning in certain situations.

Ethical Considerations and Risks

The development of generative models raises several ethical concerns. In creating an open model, we have carefully considered the following:

• Bias and Fairness
  • Generative models trained on large-scale, real-world text and image data can reflect socio-cultural biases embedded in the training material. These models underwent careful scrutiny, input data pre-processing described and posterior evaluations reported in this card.
• Misinformation and Misuse
  • Generative models can be misused to generate text that is false, misleading, or harmful.
  • Guidelines are provided for responsible use with the model, see the Responsible Generative AI Toolkit.
• Transparency and Accountability:
  • This model card summarizes details on the models' architecture, capabilities, limitations, and evaluation processes.
  • A responsibly developed open model offers the opportunity to share innovation by making generative model technology accessible to developers and researchers across the AI ecosystem.

Risks identified and mitigations:

• Perpetuation of biases: It's encouraged to perform continuous monitoring (using evaluation metrics, human review) and the exploration of de-biasing techniques during model training, fine-tuning, and other use cases.
• Generation of harmful content: Mechanisms and guidelines for content safety are essential. Developers are encouraged to exercise caution and implement appropriate content safety safeguards based on their specific product policies and application use cases.
• Misuse for malicious purposes: Technical limitations and developer and end-user education can help mitigate against malicious applications of generative models. Educational resources and reporting mechanisms for users to flag misuse are provided. Prohibited uses of Gemma models are outlined in the Gemma Prohibited Use Policy.
• Privacy violations: Models were trained on data filtered for removal of certain personal information and other sensitive data. Developers are encouraged to adhere to privacy regulations with privacy-preserving techniques.

Benefits

At the time of release, this family of models provides high-performance open generative model implementations designed from the ground up for responsible AI development compared to similarly sized models.

Using the benchmark evaluation metrics described in this document, these models have shown to provide superior performance to other, comparably-sized open model alternatives.