Google is incorporating more artificial intelligence (AI) into its cloud service offerings to compete with other companies. At its first annual Cloud Next conference since 2019, the web giant unveiled new AI-powered features for data searches, online collaboration, language translation, images, and more.
The gathering kicked off a day after it OpenAI unveiled an enterprise version of ChatGPT and as tech companies try to keep up with Microsoft, it is leading the way in empowering its products with AI.
“I am very excited to bring together so many customers and partners to show you the amazing innovations we’ve been working on,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, in a blog post.
Most companies that want to use AI must turn to giants like Microsoft, AWS, and Google to meet their main needs. computing needs. These companies, in turn, partner with AI developers -such as an alliance between Microsoft and OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT– or have developed their own models, as Google does. Google is also opening its platform in the cloud to the artificial intelligence of other companies, such as Meta and Anthropic.
More than 70% of generative AI startups deemed “unicorns” for valuations above $1 billion are Google Cloud customers, global vice president of AI business Philip Moyer said during a briefing.
The list of AI unicorns that turned to Google Cloud includes Anthropic, Jasper, and Runway.
“They are all organizations contributing their models along with Google’s basic models,” Moyer explained of the generative AI underpinnings.
Collaborators already include automaker General Motors, which is working with Google to bring conversational AI to millions of its vehicles.
At the same timeGE Appliances plans to use AI to create custom recipes, Moyer said of the ongoing collaborations.
The number of generative AI customer accounts on Google Cloud increased 15-fold in the last quarter, with “staggering” interest in generative AI projects, according to June Yang, vice president of Google Cloud.
Google is also ramping up AI features in productivity tools like Meet and Docs in Workspace, which it claims has more than 3 billion users.
AI enhancements in Workspace include a digital assistant that can take notes during online meetings or even attend on behalf of a person, according to Google. That allows the same person to be simultaneously in two places taking notes in an online meeting but not making comments, executives explained.
Generative AI is also being put to work for writing custom code, creating images, and for cybersecurity.
Amid growing concerns about the uncontrolled proliferation of problematic AI images, Google said it will apply a pixel-level watermark to indicate that the images were created by artificial intelligence, the company said. “This is truly a once-in-a-generation computing inflection point,” said Mark Lohmeyer, general manager of machine learning at Google Cloud.