If you want to know where AI is headed, this year\u2019s Google I\/O has you covered. The company\u2019s annual showcase of next-gen products, which kicked off yesterday, has all of the pomp and pizzazz, the sizzle reels and celebrity walk-ons, that you\u2019d expect from a multimillion dollar marketing event.<\/p>\n
But it also shows us just how fast this still-experimental technology is being subsumed into a line-up designed to sell phones and subscription tiers. Never before have I seen this thing we call artificial intelligence appear so normal.<\/p>\n
Yes, Google\u2019s line up of consumer-facing products is the slickest on offer. The firm is bundling most of its multimodal models into its Gemini app, including the new Imagen 4 image generator and the new Veo 3 video-generator. That means you can now access Google\u2019s full range of generative models via a single chatbot. It also announced Gemini Live, a feature that lets you share your phone\u2019s screen or your camera\u2019s view with the chatbot and ask it about what it can see.<\/p>\n
Those features were previously only seen in demos of Project Astra, a \u201cuniversal AI assistant\u201d that Google DeepMind is working on. Now, Google is inching towards putting Project Astra into the hands of anyone with a smartphone.<\/p>\n
Google is also rolling out AI Mode, an LLM-powered front-end to search. This can now pull in personal information from Gmail or Google Docs to tailor searches to users. It will include Deep Search, which can break a query down into hundreds of individual searches and then summarize the results; a version of Project Mariner, Google DeepMind\u2019s browser-using agent; and Search Live, which lets you hold up your camera and ask it what it sees.<\/p>\n
This is the new frontier. It\u2019s no longer about who has the most powerful models, but who can spin them into the best products. OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT includes many similar features to Gemini. But with its existing ecosystem of consumer services and billions of existing users, Google has a clear advantage. Power users wanting access to the latest versions of everything on display can now sign up for Google AI Ultra for $250 a month.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
When OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, Google was caught on the back foot and had to jump into a higher gear to catch up. With this year\u2019s product line-up, it feels like Google has stuck its landing.<\/p>\n
On a preview call, Google\u2019s CEO Sundar Pichai claimed that AI Overviews, a precrusor to AI Mode that provides LLM-generated summaries of search results, had turned out to be popular with hundreds of millions of users. He speculated that many of them may not even know (or care) whether or not they were using AI\u2014it was just a cool new feature. Google I\/O gives a broader glimpse of that future, one where AI is invisible.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore intelligence is available, for everyone, everywhere,\u201d Pichai told his audience. I think we are expected to marvel. But by putting AI in everything, Google is turning AI into a technology we won\u2019t notice and may not even bother to name.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you want to know where AI is headed, this year\u2019s Google I\/O has you covered. The company\u2019s annual showcase of next-gen products, which kicked off yesterday, has all of the pomp and pizzazz, the sizzle reels and celebrity walk-ons, that you\u2019d expect from a multimillion dollar marketing event. But it also shows us just how fast this still-experimental technology is being subsumed into a line-up designed to sell phones and subscription tiers. Never before have I seen this thing we call artificial intelligence appear so normal. Yes, Google\u2019s line up of consumer-facing products is the slickest on offer. The firm is bundling most of its multimodal models into its Gemini app, including the new Imagen 4 image generator and the new Veo 3 video-generator. That means you can now access Google\u2019s full range of generative models via a single chatbot. It also announced Gemini Live, a feature that lets you share your phone\u2019s screen or your camera\u2019s view with the chatbot and ask it about what it can see. Those features were previously only seen in demos of Project Astra, a \u201cuniversal AI assistant\u201d that Google DeepMind is working on. Now, Google is inching towards putting Project Astra into the hands of anyone with a smartphone. Google is also rolling out AI Mode, an LLM-powered front-end to search. This can now pull in personal information from Gmail or Google Docs to tailor searches to users. It will include Deep Search, which can break a query down into hundreds of individual searches and then summarize the results; a version of Project Mariner, Google DeepMind\u2019s browser-using agent; and Search Live, which lets you hold up your camera and ask it what it sees. This is the new frontier. It\u2019s no longer about who has the most powerful models, but who can spin them into the best products. OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT includes many similar features to Gemini. But with its existing ecosystem of consumer services and billions of existing users, Google has a clear advantage. Power users wanting access to the latest versions of everything on display can now sign up for Google AI Ultra for $250 a month.\u00a0\u00a0 When OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, Google was caught on the back foot and had to jump into a higher gear to catch up. With this year\u2019s product line-up, it feels like Google has stuck its landing. On a preview call, Google\u2019s CEO Sundar Pichai claimed that AI Overviews, a precrusor to AI Mode that provides LLM-generated summaries of search results, had turned out to be popular with hundreds of millions of users. He speculated that many of them may not even know (or care) whether or not they were using AI\u2014it was just a cool new feature. Google I\/O gives a broader glimpse of that future, one where AI is invisible. \u201cMore intelligence is available, for everyone, everywhere,\u201d Pichai told his audience. I think we are expected to marvel. But by putting AI in everything, Google is turning AI into a technology we won\u2019t notice and may not even bother to name.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pmpro_default_level":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,5,7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai-club","category-committee","category-news","category-uncategorized","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n