Google Cloud Next: Google Taking 'Bold', 'Responsible' Approach with Generative AI

Generative AI took center stage on Day 1 of this week’s massive Google Cloud Next in San Francisco.

Google Cloud announced numerous updates and new capabilities, many powered by generative AI advancements. Google CEO Sundar Pichai (shown above, delivering his remarks) told attendees Google will continue to be “bold and responsible” in its approach to generative AI and “make these powerful tools accessible so everyone can benefit.”

The shift to AI will be “one of the most profound shifts we’ll see in our lifetime, he said.

“It will touch every sector, every industry, every business function, and significantly change the way we live and work,” Pichai said. “This isn’t just the future. We are already starting to experience the benefits right now. As a company, we’ve been preparing for this moment for some time, and for the last seven years we have taken an AI-first approach, applying AI to make our products radically more helpful. We believe that making AI helpful for everyone is the most important way we’ll deliver on our mission in the next decade. That’s why we have invested in the very best tooling, foundation models and infrastructure across both CPUs and GPUs. These underlying technologies are helping us transform our products and businesses, and they’ll help you transform yours.”

Perfecting Google Search

Google Cloud has spent the past 25 years trying to perfect Google Search, and “we are still not done yet,” Pichai said.

“Today we are using generative AI to reimagine the experience and take more of the work out of searching,” he said. “We call this the search generative experience or SG for short. SG uses advanced AI to help you get the gist of a topic quickly with an overview, easily follow up on questions in a conversational way, or even make coding tasks easier. We’ve had really great feedback so far helping us learn and improve fast. As we build generative AI into search, we are drawing on years of insights and technology development to harness and deploy AI at scale. Google Cloud is how we provide the same insights, tools and platforms to help you all innovate to sharing the best of our AI directly. And it’s been really exciting to see how customers have started using generative AI in just a short time.”

For example, GM is using Google Cloud’s conversational AI in its OnStar connected vehicles, and it will continue to explore other ways to apply chat and document analysis to give drivers information when they need it, Pichai said. In addition, HCA Health Care is collaborating with Google Cloud to bring Medcom, Google’s large model for health care, to help doctors provide better patient care.

Just Scratching the Surface

“This is only scratching the surface of what we have seen since making our foundation models available through our cloud AI platform called Vertex AI,” Pichai said. “Since March, tens of thousands of developers are now using over 100 AI models on Vertex, building generative AI applications. We are working with partners across our open ecosystem to expand a variety of models customers can choose so they have the right model for whatever they want to create. We truly believe we are embarking on a golden age of innovation and we are excited for what we will build together with all of you,” he said.

Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Google Cloud Next.