Google I/O wrap-up: Gemini AI updates, new search features and more

Google
on
Tuesday
hosted
its
annual
I/O
developer
conference,
and
rolled
out
a
range
of

artificial
intelligence
products,
from
new
search
and
chat
features
to
AI
hardware
for
cloud
customers.
The
announcements
underscore
the
company’s
focus
on
AI
as
it
fends
off
competitors,
such
as
OpenAI.

Many
of
the
features
or
tools
Google
unveiled
are
only
in
a
testing
phase
or
limited
to
developers,
but
they
give
an
idea
of
how
the
tech
giant
is
thinking
about
AI
and
where
it’s
investing.
Google
makes
money
from
AI
by
charging
developers
who
use
its
models
and
from
customers
who
pay
for
Gemini
Advanced,
its
competitor
to

ChatGPT,
which
costs
$19.99
per
month
and
can
help
users
summarize
PDFs,
Google
Docs
and
more.

Tuesday’s
announcements
follow
similar
events
held
by
its
AI
competitors.
Earlier
this
month,


Amazon-backed

Anthropic
announced
its first-ever
enterprise
offering and
a
free
iPhone
app.
Meanwhile,

OpenAI

on
Monday
launched
a
new
AI
model
and
desktop
version
of
ChatGPT,
along
with
a
new
user
interface.

Here’s
what
Google
announced.

Google
introduced

updates
to
Gemini
1.5
Pro,
its
AI
model
that
will
soon
be
able
to
handle
even
more
data
—
for
example,
the
tool
can
summarize
1,500
pages
of
text
uploaded
by
a
user.

There’s
also
a
new
Gemini
1.5
Flash
AI
model,
which
the
company
said
is
more
cost-effective
and
designed
for
smaller
tasks
like
quickly
summarizing
conversations,
captioning
images
and
videos
and
pulling
data
from
large
documents.

Google
CEO

Sundar
Pichai
highlighted
improvements
to
Gemini’s
translations,
adding
that
it
will
be
available
to
all
developers
worldwide
in
35
languages.
Within
Gmail,
Gemini
1.5
Pro
will
analyze
attached
PDFs
and
videos,
giving
summaries
and
more,
Pichai
said.
That
means
that
if
you
missed
a
long
email
thread
on
vacation,
Gemini
will
be
able
to
summarize
it
along
with
any
attachments.

The
new
Gemini
updates
are
also
helpful
for
searching
Gmail.
One
example
the
company
gave:
If
you’ve
been
comparing
prices
from
different
contractors
to
fix
your
roof
and
are
looking
for
a
summary
to
help
you
decide
who
to
pick,
Gemini
could
return
three
quotes
along
with
the
anticipated
start
dates
offered
in
the
different
email
threads.

Google
said
Gemini
will
eventually
replace
Google
Assistant
on
Android
phones,
suggesting
it’s
going
to
be
a
more
powerful
competitor
to


Apple’s
Siri
on
iPhone.

Google
announced
“Veo,”
its
latest
model
for
generating
high-definition
video,
and
Imagen
3,
its
highest
quality
text-to-image
model,
which
promises
lifelike
images
and
“fewer
distracting
visual
artifacts
than
our
prior
models.”

The
tools
will
be
available
for
select
creators
on
Monday
and
will
come
to
Vertex
AI,
Google’s
machine
learning
platform
that
lets
developers
train
and
deploy
AI
applications.

The
company
also
showcased
“Audio
Overviews,”
the
ability
to
generate
audio
discussions
based
on
text
input.
For
instance,
if
a
user
uploads
a
lesson
plan,
the
chatbot
can
speak
a
summary
of
it.
Or,
if
you
ask
for
an
example
of
a
science
problem
in
real
life,
it
can
do
so
through
interactive
audio.

Separately,
the
company
also
showcased
“AI
Sandbox,”
a
range
of
generative
AI
tools
for
creating
music
and
sounds
from
scratch,
based
on
user
prompts.

Generative
AI
tools
such
as
chatbots
and
image
creators
continue
to
have
issues
with
accuracy,
however.

Google
search
boss

Prabhakar
Raghavan
told
employees
last
month
that
competitors
“may
have
a
new
gizmo
out
there
that
people
like
to
play
with,
but
they
still
come
to
Google
to
verify
what
they
see
there
because
it
is
the
trusted
source,
and
it
becomes
more
critical
in
this
era
of
generative
AI.”

Earlier
this
year, Google
introduced
the
Gemini-powered
image
generator.
Users
discovered
historical
inaccuracies
that
went
viral
online,
and
the company
pulled
the
feature,
saying
it
would
relaunch
it
in
the
coming
weeks.
The
feature
has
still
not
been
re-released.

The
tech
giant
is
launching
“AI
Overviews”
in
Google
Search
on
Monday
in
the
U.S.
AI
Overviews
show
a
quick
summary
of
answers
to
the
most
complex
search
questions,
according
to
Liz
Reid,
head
of
Google
Search.
For
example,
if
a
user
searches
for
the
best
way
to
clean
leather
boots,
the
results
page
may
display
an
“AI
Overview”
at
the
top
with
a
multi-step
cleaning
process,
gleaned
from
information
it
synthesized
from
around
the
web.

The
company
said
it
plans
to
introduce
assistant-like
planning
capabilities
directly
within
search.
It
explained
that
users
will
be
able
to
search
for
something
like,
“‘Create
a
3-day
meal
plan
for
a
group
that’s
easy
to
prepare,'”
and
you’ll
get
a
starting
point
with
a
wide
range
of
recipes
from
across
the
web.

As
far
as
its
progress
to
offer
“multimodality,”
or
integrating
more
images
and
video
within
generative
AI
tools,
Google
said
it
will
begin
testing
the
ability
for
users
to
ask
questions
through
video,
such
as
filming
a
problem
with
a
product
they
own,
uploading
it
and
asking
the
search
engine
to
figure
out
the
problem.
In
one
example,
Google
showed
someone
filming
a
broken
record
player
while
asking
why
it
wasn’t
working.
Google
Search
found
the
model
of
the
record
player
and
suggested
that
it
could
be
malfunctioning
because
it
wasn’t
properly
balanced.

Another
new
feature
being
tested
is
called
“AI
Teammate,”
which
will
integrate
into
a
user’s
Google
Workspace.
It
can
build
a
searchable
collection
of
work
from
messages
and
email
threads
with
more
PDFs
and
documents.
For
instance,
a
founder-to-be
could
ask
the
AI
Teammate,
“Are
we
ready
for
launch?”
and
the
assistant
will
provide
an
analysis
and
summary
based
on
the
information
it
can
access
in
Gmail,
Google
Docs
and
other
Workspace
apps.

Project
Astra
is
Google’s
latest
advancement
toward
its
AI
assistant
that’s
being
built
by
Google’s
DeepMind
AI
unit.
It’s
just
a
prototype
for
now,
but
you
can
think
of
it
as
Google’s
aim
to
develop
its
own
version
of
J.A.R.V.I.S.,
Tony
Stark’s
all-knowing
AI
assistant
from
the
Marvel
Universe.

In
the
demo
video
presented
at
Google
I/O,
the
assistant
—
through
video
and
audio,
rather
than
a
chatbot
interface
—
was
able
to
help
the
user
remember
where
they
left
their
glasses,
review
code
and
answer
questions
about
what
a
certain
part
of
a
speaker
is
called,
when
that
speaker
was
shown
on
video.

Google
said
a
truly
useful
chatbot
needs
to
let
users
“talk
to
it
naturally
and
without
lag
or
delay.”
The
conversation
in
the
demo
video
happened
in
real
time,
without
lags.
The
demo
followed

OpenAI’s
Monday
showcase
of
a
similar
audio
back-and-forth
conversation
with
ChatGPT.

DeepMind
CEO
Demis
Hassabis
said
onstage
that
“getting
response
time
down
to
something
conversational
is
a
difficult
engineering
challenge.”

Pichai
said
he
expects
Project
Astra
to
launch
in
Gemini
later
this
year.

Google
also
announced
Trillium,
its
sixth-generation
TPU,
or
tensor
processing
unit
—
a
piece
of
hardware
integral
to
running
complex
AI
operations
—
which
is
to
be
available
to
cloud
customers
in
late
2024.

The
TPUs
aren’t
meant
to
compete
with
other
chips,
like


Nvidia’s
graphics
processing
units.
Pichai
noted
during
I/O,
for
example,
that
Google
Cloud
will
begin
offering
Nvidia’s
Blackwell
GPUs
in
early
2025.

Nvidia
said
in
March
that
Google
will
be
using
the
Blackwell
platform
for
“various
internal
deployments
and
will
be
one
of
the
first
cloud
providers
to
offer
Blackwell-powered
instances,”
and
that
access
to
Nvidia’s
systems
will
help
Google
offer
large-scale
tools
for
enterprise
developers
building
large
language
models.

In
his
speech,
Pichai
highlighted
Google’s
“longstanding
partnership
with
Nvidia.”
The
companies
have
been
working
together
for

more
than
a
decade,
and
Pichai
has
said
in
the
past
that
he
expects
them
to
still
be
doing
so
a
decade
from
now.