Google Cloud Next 2023 highlights: Everything you missed during the keynote

Vertex AI logo (Image credit: Google)

Vertex AI gets better

About two years back, Google unveiled Vertex AI, a unified artificial intelligence platform that offers all of Google’s cloud services under one roof. With Vertex AI, you can build ML models or deploy and scale them easily using pre-trained and custom tooling. It was followed by Vertex AI Vision, the machine learning platform as a service (ML PaaS) offering from Google Cloud. Since the general availability of generative AI services based on Vertex AI earlier this year, developers can use several new tools and models, such as the word completion model driven by PaLM 2, the Embeddings API for text and other foundation models. At Google Next, Google is adding Meta’s Llama 2 and TII’s Falcon. This makes Google Cloud the only Cloud provider to support first-party, open source and third-party models. APIs of these models will be accessible through a new tool in its Cloud Platform named Model Garden.

Dual AI tool (Image credit: Google)

Duet AI For Google Workspace

At I/O 2023, Google announced “Duet AI” as the branding for generative AI features in Workspace. At that time, its availability was limited to trusted testers by invitation only. However, now Google has made Duet AI for Google Workspace available for all users with a no-cost trial. Google will charge $30 per user for access to Duet, as per CNBC.

Duet AI is a development interface powered by AI that includes code and chat assistance for developers on Google Cloud’s platform. Duet AI covers a range of generative AI tools for Google’s productivity apps, including Gmail, Drive, Slides, Docs, and more. Basically, Google is taking on Microsoft’s Copilot.

Google wants to make Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet more helpful with the help of generative AI.

At I/O, Gmail got a new feature called “Help me write” which will allow people to use generative AI to send auto-replies to emails and modify them to best meet their needs. Meanwhile, Sheets got a “Help me organize” feature where users can ask for information to be organised for them in the sheet through a simple word prompt. Similarly, in Google Slides there’s a new “Help me visualize” entry where users can use prompts to get AI- AI-generated images.

At Cloud Next, Google announced further Workspace AI integration in Google’s other core apps such as Meet and Chat. Within Meet, Google’s new AI features include the ability to take notes in real-time: just click “take notes for me,” and the app will capture a summary and action items as the meeting is going on. Google will be able to show you a mid-meeting summary so that you can catch up on what happened

Another new Meet feature allows Duet to “attend” a meeting on your behalf. On a meeting invite, simply click on the “attend for me” button, and Google can auto-generate some text about what you might want to discuss. Those notes will be viewable to attendees during the meeting so that they can discuss them.

Other new features include dynamic tiles and face detection allowing users in a meeting room their own video tile with a name. Then there is also an automated translated captions feature that will detect when another language is spoken and display the translation in real language. The new automatic translated captions feature supports up to 18 languages.

Lastly, Google is integrating Duet AI into Google Chat. Now you can chat directly with Duet AI and ask questions about your content, get a summary of documents in a space and catch up on missed conversations. In fact, it’s now a lot easier to use Google Chat thanks to a new interface and a new shortcut option. Google is also integrating smart canvas capabilities, such as smart chips, inside Google Chat. Google Chat now lets you add up to 50,000 members to a space. The change marks a significant increase from the previous limit of 8000 members. A brand new feature called Huddles is coming to Google Chat. With Huddles, instead of jumping out of the conversation into a meeting, the meeting is integrated directly into the chat experience. Google says Huddles will be available in public preview by the end of the year. In the coming weeks, Google will add support for third-party apps to Chat which include big names such as Zoho, Workday and Loom.

70% Gen AI unicorns use Google Cloud

During the event, Google announced that around 70 per cent of Generative AI unicorns and more than half of all funded AI startups are Google Cloud customers. This year’s summit illustrated how Google offers the AI-optimised infrastructure needed to run AI models.