A Generalist Agent vs Sanalabs

Gato is the generalist agent DeepMind introduced in its May 2022 research post "A Generalist Agent." One transformer policy with shared weights handles chat, image captioning, Atari games, and real robot arm block stacking from the same model. The post describes it as a multi-modal, multi-task, multi-embodiment policy that picks whether to emit text, joint torques, button presses, or other tokens based on context.

Most tools in this space train a separate model per task domain. Gato instead serializes every modality and environment into a flat token sequence and runs it through a transformer shaped like a large language model. That means one pretrained checkpoint moves between dialogue, vision, and control without swapping architectures.

During training, data from simulated and real environments mixes with natural language and image datasets, with loss masked so Gato predicts only action and text targets. At deployment, a prompt tokenizes first, each new observation appends to the sequence, and the model samples an action vector one token at a time inside a 1024-token context window. The blog includes domain-grouped charts of tasks where the pretrained model clears expert score thresholds.

The writeup targets AI and robotics researchers more than everyday software buyers. You read and cite the research on deepmind.google; there is no public signup flow, API tier, or download button on the pages reviewed here.

Sana Labs builds enterprise AI tools for knowledge work and corporate learning under two products: Sana for AI agents across your company apps, and Sana Learn for training and onboarding. The Stockholm-based company now operates as part of Workday after its acquisition.

Where most enterprise AI vendors bolt a chatbot onto existing software, Sana connects to your company's documents, apps, and workflows so agents can find answers, generate reports, and automate multi-step processes. Sana Learn replaces a patchwork of LMS, LXP, and authoring tools with one platform that creates courses from PDFs and gives each learner a personal tutor.

The platform targets large organizations in financial services, law, manufacturing, and tech. Spotify, Polestar, and Foodora are among the customers cited on the site, with case studies reporting 10 hours saved per employee per week and course creation dropping from 3 weeks to 3 hours.