By Adam Pease
Alphabet Plans New Generative AI Announcements for Google I/O
Google I/O, the search giant’s yearly developer conference is coming up this Wednesday, and parent company Alphabet reportedly plans to unveil a variety of new AI announcements when it takes to the stage later this week. This blog discusses the news amidst the race for enterprise AI.
What’s Google Bringing to the Table?
On Wednesday, Google is expected to announce PaLM 2, the successor to its most sophisticated large language model (LLM). This general-purpose AI model can be expected to perform competitively on a variety of language, but how exactly it stacks up to state-of-the-art models like GPT-4 remains to be seen.
Google is also reportedly planning to expand the role played by AI in its primary services, ranging from its core search product to the suite of enterprise office tools that includes Meet, Sheets, and Slides.
This play mirrors Microsoft’s own plans to integrate generative AI into the Office workplace suite. It also suggests that Google users can expect to have conversational assistants and other AI features included in their application experiences in the near future.
Can Google Catch Up?
It’s too early to say whether the upcoming announcements will be enough to shift to the terrain of an AI race where Google has been perceived to lag behind its rivals.
Google Bard had a cold reception, with many lamenting that it didn’t reach the quality of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has taken the tech world by storm since its release last November.
OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft has given Google a clear rival in the form of Bing, the old Microsoft search engine that has recently been retrofitted with a generative AI assistant.
Nevertheless, Bing has received its own share of negative coverage and user complaints, suggesting that nothing about the current landscape of AI leadership can be taken for granted.
If Google wants to shift the narrative, it will need to demonstrate capabilities that are at least on the level of generative AI’s leaders, along with a unique approach that leverages its robust infrastructure and deep pool of user data.
Bottom Line
Time will tell whether Google’s upcoming announcements are enough to move the needle in an AI race where it has spent several months playing the underdog to Microsoft and OpenAI.
It will be important to see whether Google’s new set of features merely maintains parity with its competitors, or if it brings something truly transformative to the table.
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