Pieter Levels and Google spar over the Google Gemini API

On Monday, xAI launched its API for the first time. Although it received some mixed reviews,  indie hacking legend Pieter Levels was extremely impressed with how easy it was to set up, claiming it only took “literally 30 seconds” to get the API set up in his apps. 

According to Levels, this is a welcome contrast to the Google Gemini API, which he claims was so frustrating to set up that he just “gave up altogether after 30 minutes.”

This is when the sparks started flying.

Nado vs. Levels

Zachary Nado, a research engineer at Google’s AI wing DeepMind, responded to Level’s complaints with a classic gamer diss. He has since deleted the post, but luckily, it has been immortalized in a screenshot.

Levels responded to Nado twice. The first time with a video showing why it’s not a “skill issue”, and the second time with a little clap back…which Nado did not appreciate.

Nado has since come to his senses and realized that winning an argument on X with a man who is known for winning arguments on X probably isn’t the best idea. Or, he realized that tons of negative PR might not be the best thing for his career or his employer. In any case, he deleted the posts and admitted he got a bit “trigger happy.” However, he is standing by his original “skill issue” post.

I reached out to Nado for further comment, but did not receive a response. 

So, that concludes the Nado saga, but it doesn’t answer the underlying question: is Levels’s preference of xAI API’s over Google’s a skill issue?

Skill issue?

The crux of the issue is how difficult it is to set up the two APIs. Levels claims that xAI’s is way easier to set up than Google’s, but Nado and Logan Kilpatrick, the product lead for Google’s AI Studio, disagree. According to Kilpatrick, you can set up Google’s API with just three clicks on Google AI Studio, which is Google’s AI homebase. 

Levels then put Kilpatrick’s claims to the test and found that, although AI Studio is an improvement, it still suffers from no OpenAI-compatible queries (which xAI has) and way too many legal popups. Thus, he concludes that “Google is taken over by lawyers.”

To Kilpatrick’s credit, he didn’t belittle Levels in the face of this criticism. Instead, he responded by putting on his founder mode hat, moving to remove some of the popups and hustling to release OpenAI compatibility. 

And, although there is still much work to be done, it seems to have gotten off to a good start.

The Google turnaround

This is not the first time that Levels has taken aim at Google, and judging from some of the replies on his API complaint post, he is far from the only one unhappy with the search giant. 

Levels attributes Google’s ills to excessive corporate bureaucracy, which checks with his comment on Google being taken over by lawyers.

Nobody knows for sure what would return Google to its prior glory. But, as Levels puts it, getting lawyers off the back of talented employees like Kilpatrick definitely wouldn’t hurt.