Gemini 3 Dropped But You Can't Actually Use It

Google just launched Gemini 3 Pro this morning. The benchmarks are legitimately insane. It's topping basically every major leaderboard, beating GPT-5.1 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 across the board. On paper, this is the smartest AI model available right now.

One problem: you can't actually use it.

So here's what happened. Google released Antigravity today - their new IDE built specifically for Gemini 3. Free public preview, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Sounds perfect. I downloaded it, opened it up, signed in with my Google account, and immediately got stuck on an infinite loading screen that just says "Setting up your account."

Twenty minutes later, still spinning. Restarted the app. Same thing. Tried a different Google account. Nothing.

And I'm definitely not alone here. There are already multiple posts on Stack Overflow from people hitting the exact same wall. People in WeChat groups, tech forums all over the world - tons of developers are stuck at this exact screen. Some say try switching Google accounts, others suggest changing your IP address or VPN location. Nobody has actually found a fix that works consistently.

The app exists. The download works. You just can't get past the setup screen. Classic day-one Google.

Okay fine, so maybe Antigravity isn't ready. What about trying Gemini 3 through Gemini CLI instead?

Yeah, about that. To access Gemini 3 Pro in the CLI, you need either Google AI Ultra at $249.99/month or a paid API key. Everyone else - free tier users, the $19.99/month Pro subscribers, Gemini Code Assist Standard users - they all have to join a waitlist. No timeline on when that opens up. Could be days, could be weeks.

So right now, the only people who can actually use Gemini 3 in any capacity are either paying Google $250/month or already have paid API access set up. That's it. Everyone else is locked out.

For a model Google is positioning as their most important release of the year, the accessibility is a joke.

Even the people who DID get into Antigravity are reporting problems. VentureBeat says early users are experiencing errors and slow generation. The platform is clearly a rough preview build - UI glitches, weird behaviors, the whole deal.

Theo from t3.gg got early access and made a whole video walking through Antigravity and pointing out all the issues. Video here - check it out if you want to see what it actually looks like when it works. Spoiler: it's buggy.

Google built Antigravity around four principles - trust, autonomy, feedback, and self-improvement. But first you need to actually be able to open the damn thing.

Here's the frustrating part: Gemini 3 Pro is legitimately impressive when you look at the numbers.

On the LMArena Leaderboard, Gemini 3 scored 1501 Elo - the highest score recorded. For comparison, this puts it above both GPT-5.1 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 in head-to-head evaluations.

Let's break down some key benchmarks:

Humanity's Last Exam (tests PhD-level reasoning):

GPQA Diamond (expert-level science questions):

MathArena Apex (challenging math competition problems):

That math score is particularly wild. Gemini 3 is destroying the competition on difficult mathematical reasoning.

Video-MMMU (multimodal video understanding):

SimpleQA Verified (factual accuracy):

On factual accuracy, Gemini 3 is scoring more than double what GPT-5.1 and Claude manage. That's a massive gap.

The one place where Gemini 3 doesn't dominate is coding. On SWE-bench Verified, which tests real-world software engineering tasks:

Claude edges out both competitors slightly here. But we're talking about differences of one percentage point - basically a tie.

For multimodal tasks, reasoning, math, and factual accuracy, Gemini 3 is the clear winner. The tech is genuinely next-level.

The vision for Antigravity is actually pretty compelling. When it works, you get agents that can operate across your editor, terminal, and browser simultaneously. You describe what you want to build, and the agents plan it out, write the code, test it in a browser, and generate artifacts like task lists, implementation plans, and browser recordings to show you what they did.

It supports Gemini 3 Pro as the default, but you can also use Claude Sonnet 4.5 or OpenAI's GPT-OSS models. Google says they're offering generous rate limits that refresh every five hours. And the whole thing is designed around this "agent-first" workflow where you manage multiple agents working on different parts of your project at the same time from a mission control view.

The problem is that vision requires the product to actually function. And right now, for most people, it doesn't.

Look, Gemini 3 might genuinely be the best reasoning model available right now. The benchmarks back that up. It handles 1 million token context windows, scores at PhD-level on complex reasoning tasks, and absolutely crushes math and multimodal understanding.

But none of that matters if developers can't access it. Impressive tech sitting behind broken login screens and $250/month paywalls is just vaporware.

Compare this to how Anthropic launched Claude Sonnet 4.5 or how OpenAI rolled out GPT-5.1. You just open Claude or ChatGPT, select the model, and start using it. That's it. No infinite loading spinners. No waitlists for the CLI. No hunting for workarounds.

Google is clearly rushing to compete in the AI race, but they're shipping products that aren't ready. This is becoming a pattern. Remember the Gemini 2 launch issues? The AI Overviews controversy? Google keeps announcing impressive technology before it actually works for regular users.

The irony is that the underlying model is probably great. Gemini 3 has the benchmarks to prove it's a legitimate competitor. But delivery matters just as much as capability, and Google is failing at delivery.

If you want to try Gemini 3 today, here are your options:

If you want to see what Antigravity looks like when it's functioning, check out Theo's video where he walks through the early access build.

Time estimate: Could be days or weeks before this is actually usable for most developers

Cost: Free if you can get in, $249.99/month if you need it now through CLI

The model is legitimately good. The benchmarks prove it. Gemini 3 Pro is beating GPT-5.1 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 across most major tests. When Antigravity works, it looks like it could be a solid development environment.

But the launch is completely botched. Login screens that don't work, paywalls for basic access, buggy experiences for the few who get through. This is exactly the kind of rushed, half-baked rollout that makes developers lose trust in Google's AI products.

The tech might be impressive, but the execution is broken. And until Google fixes that, Gemini 3 is just another announcement that doesn't translate into something you can actually use.