Bloomberg Línea — After weeks of expectation, Google (GOOG) on Tuesday presented new features of its generative AI to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has Microsoft (MSFT) as one of its main investors.
The technology will be used by developers and for Google Workspace services, in activities ranging from customizing texts in Sheets, asking the AI to make a slide presentation on any topic, to transcribing and summarizing meetings in Google Meet, among others.
In a press presentation, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said that Google had already been using and investing in generative AI for years, such as the auto-completion features that suggest words in Google searches or in email replies.
But since generative AI has become popular in the market after Microsoft’s interest in OpenAI, Google announced that it is “at a pivotal moment in the AI journey.”
“We have been responsibly developing great language models to bring that into our products. Now, developers and their businesses can try new applications and products to make it easier, safer, and more scalable to grow with Google’s AI models through Google Cloud and a new prototypical environment called MakerSuite,” Kurian said.
For developers, Google announced PaLM API and MakerSuite. The developer will be able to write an input such as ‘day’, and the AI will provide the output, such as ‘night’. This will make coding faster and more automatic.
PaLM API is a tool for developers to make code based on Google’s language model. The application comes with a tool called MakerSuite, which allows developers to prototype ideas and over time can drive engineering and synthetic data generation. The tool will have a waiting list.
For developers who want to build and customize their own models and apps through generative AI, Google will allow PaLM access through Google Cloud, to integrate into the cloud service’s existing solutions: Vertex AI and App Builder. On Tuesday, Google said that trusted testers will be able to access Vertex AI and App Builder.
When asked by Bloomberg Línea, Google said that for Vertex AI and Generative AI App Builder, the company is “working with a limited set of trusted testers who are helping us develop our generative AI offerings. “We look forward to opening it up more broadly soon.”
Services for Docs and Gmail undergoing testing
For Workspace, Google is introducing a first set of AI-based writing features in Google Docs and Gmail.
“We will launch these new experiences this month through our Trusted Tester program, starting with English in the United States. Then, we will repeat and refine the experiences before making them more widely available to consumers, small businesses, general companies and educational institutions in more countries and languages.”
When asked about the impact of technologies, such as the one that writes emails according to the topic requested, on companies’ workforce, Google said there will be transformations in the way the market currently works.
“Without a doubt, jobs will change, as they always do. But many jobs will be complemented by these technologies, and new jobs that we can’t imagine today will also be created,” Google said in a response to Bloomberg Línea.
“For example, who could imagine flight attendants before commercial air travel? That challenge is bigger than any company or government can solve, so we need to work together on programs that help people make a living and find meaning in work.”
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