Google unpacks impressive AI demos at I/O developer conference
Google unveiled its new AI plans at Google I/O, the tech giant’s annual developer conference, yesterday. That it would be about AI was a given. Since last year’s I/O, Google has introduced Gemini, a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Among the announcements were a new video generator, Veo, which uses generative AI to develop 1080p resolution videos. Actor and filmmaker Donald Glover showed his first experiments with Veo, which is currently available to only a small group of creators.
Project Astra, a pair of glasses with a camera, microphone and speaker that can answer all sorts of questions such as ‘Where did you see my glasses?’ ‘What does the tweeter of a speaker do? ‘What code do I see on the screen?’
The project comes from the company’s DeepMind division, but it is unclear when it will be integrated into Google’s products.
Gemini is getting a faster version called Gemini 1.5 Flash in addition to Gemini 1.0 and Gemini 1.5 Pro. Flash can process commands faster, thanks in part to 2 million ‘context windows’ that help Gemini make sense of the world. For 1.5 Pro subscribers that translates into a lightning-fast summarisation of a 1,500-page document and soon, 30,000 lines of code, and an hour-long video.
Gemini will be integrated into Gmail to search and summarise e-mails. The AI helper can do thinks like return an ordered item based on the receipt. It can also identify out key points from a pdf.
AI will also be used to detect scams during chat conversations. The feature, which will be built into a future version of Android, uses Gemini Nano, the smallest version of Google’s Generative AI offering.
Google is also adding more AI to its search engine, though initially only for US users.
On the hardware front, Google unveiled an AI data centre chip family called Trillium. With it, Google is competing with chipmaker Nvidia, which holds 80% of the market.
“Industry demand for (machine learning) computing has grown by a factor of 1 million over the past six years,” said CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured). The first chips will be available to its cloud customers by the end of 2024.
Google Photos is getting a lot more intelligent thanks to Gemini. Ask Photos helps search your collection of photos for specific characteristics. For example, all the photos showing a child’s swimming lessons.
WorkSpace users will get a new helping hand to optimise their day in the form of a new panel on the right hand side of the screen that offers hints, meeting summaries and better ‘smart replies’ – one click e-mail answers to free up time that might otherwise be spent crafting the perfect one-line message. Down the line we can look forward to longer messages via ‘contextual’ smart replies.
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