Here’s The Best Of Google’s New AI Tech Announced At Google I/O 2024

One of the most awaited events in the world of technology is Google’s I/O (taken from the number googol to represent “1” and “0”), an annual developer conference in which the company reveals its latest products and services and its aimed focus for the coming year.

In the 2024 edition of Google I/O, the company spoke majorly about its development in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector and announced a range of updates and new features added to its software products and services, which revolved around AI and GenAI (generative artificial intelligence) technologies.

So, what were the major announcements made by the company? Let’s explore!
 

What Announcements Were Made At Google I/O 2024?

 

• While Google I/O 2024 was held at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, on May 14, 2024, the company uploaded videos of the event to its YouTube channel for the world to view, learn and discuss its latest offerings and future plans.

• It’s no surprise that Google would be focusing on improving its AI offerings for its software products and services, especially considering how fast the industry is moving.

• As a result, Google’s prized generative AI model, Gemini, was mentioned quite a bit.

• Google Workspaces’ Gemini side panel will now come with Gemini 1.5 Pro, which includes Gmail, Docs, Drive, Slides and Sheets, while some new features coming to the Gmail mobile app.

• As per a blog post announcing the same, the side panel will now be available for Workspace Labs and Gemini for Workspace Alpha users, with availability on desktop for businesses and consumers through Gemini for Workspace add-ons and the Google One AI Premium plan coming next month.

• Additionally, Gemini 1.5 Pro has been made available for all developers globally.

• Google also introduced two new models based on its Gemini AI. Gemini 1.5 Flash consists of a model that’s “lighter-weight than 1.5 Pro and designed to be fast and efficient to serve at scale,” as per a blog post published by Google. Both 1.5 Pro and 1.5 Flash are now available in public preview.

• Google also announced updates across the Gemini family of models, with Gemma 2, its next generation of lightweight, state-of-the-art open source models and PaliGemma, a powerful open vision-language model (VLM), which is available on GitHub, Hugging Face models, Kaggle, Vertex AI Model Garden and ai.nvidia.com.

• Google’s on-device mobile LLM (Large Language Model), which was previously called Gemini Nano, will be renamed to Gemini Nano with Multimodality and will allow users to “turn any input into any output”. Essentially, the model can draw information from text, photos, audio, web, social videos and live feed from a phone’s camera, to summarize or answer questions about the input.

 

• Google also introduced Project Astra, a voice-powered, visual chatbot that uses a phone camera and speech recognition to allow users to ask questions about their surroundings, components of an object, information on a digital screen or even identify objects to provide information on which town they’re in. Google’s announcement came a day after OpenAI made an announcement of a similar tool – GPT-4o.

• The model can run as an application on a smartphone and a pair of smart glasses (prototype).

• Coming into Google Photos is Ask Photos, which makes it easier for users to look for a specific memory or recall information included in the gallery, simply by asking the tool to find photos with a specific theme or shortlist the best ones, saving users the need to keep scrolling to find such photos.

• Google introduced VideoFX, a video generation model based on Google DeepMind’s Veo. VideoFX allows users to generate 1080p videos with text prompts and comes with more flexibility. Google’s image generator, ImageFX, also received improvements, reducing the issues of creating unwanted images. Google even updated its AI music generator with a new DJ Mode, which allows users to generate song loops and samples from prompts.

• Building on what built the company to what it is, Google enhanced its search engine by infusing powerful AI capabilities.

• This includes AI-organized search capabilities, which provides a more concise view of search results and better search results. Its AI overviews capability summarizes content from various sources at the top of the results page, while Multi-Step Reasoning provides layered information for topics with contextual depth.

• Updates made to Google Lens allows users to point their cameras at objects to gather answers and suggestions for improvements.

• Adding safety to Android, Google presented a feature that could detect scams by listening to phone calls and detecting language, words or action requests that scammers would use and display a warning for users to hang up.

Do you think this move by Google will help it capture a stronger position in the GenAI market?

Let us know in the comments below!