By Juliet Umeh
Google has announced several ways Artificial Intelligence, AI has made searching on its platform seamless.
The announcements were made during the recent 2024 Google I/O.
Google said it is fundamentally changing what it builds and how it goes about building it. It also noted that it is committed to making AI accessible and helpful for every developer by providing the tools needed to innovate in this new reality.
Here are the ways:
* Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash: Google Gemini 1.5 Pro is a powerful AI model with a one million token context window. This enables it to process vast amounts of information like an hour of video or 1,500 pages of a PDF and respond to complex queries about this source material.
Gemini 1.5 pro will also be available in more than 35 languages starting today, providing access to the latest technical advances, including deep analysis of data files like spreadsheets, enhanced image understanding and a greatly expanded context window, starting at 1 million tokens.
Additionally, Google also introduced Gemini 1.5 Flash, a more cost-efficient model built based on user feedback, with lower latencies; and Project Astra, Google’s vision for the next generation of AI assistants, a responsive agent that can understand and react to the context of conversations. *Generative AI in Search: Google is integrating Gemini into Search, enhancing its ability to understand and respond to complex queries.
This includes features like: AI Overview, designed for advanced multi-step reasoning, planning, and multimodal capabilities; Multi-step reasoning which breaks down complex questions into smaller parts, synthesising the most relevant information and stitching it all together into a comprehensive AI Answer. Also, Search with video which allows users to ask questions about video content by taking a quick video and get AI-powered answers in response.
*Gemini for Android: Gemini is being integrated into Android to power new features like:”Circle to Search,” TalkBack, Live scam detection, Gemini as an Assistant.
* Gemini for Workspace helps businesses and everyday users get more out of their Google apps — from drafting emails in Gmail to organising project plans in sheets.
According to Google, over the last year, more than a million people and tens of thousands of companies have used generative AI in Workspace when they need an extra hand or dose of inspiration.
*Gemini in the Workspace side panel is now using the Gemini 1.5 Pro model. It is available for Workspace Labs and Gemini for Workspace Alpha users and will be generally available next month to Gemini for Workspace customers and Google One AI Premium subscribers. It has a longer context window and more advanced reasoning to give you more insightful responses.
*Ask Photos: Google Photos is getting a new feature called “Ask Photos,” which uses Gemini to answer questions about photos and videos, such as finding specific images or recalling past events. This feature will be available beginning with the US and rolling out to other countries soon.
* Imagen 3: Imagen 3, Google’s latest text-to-image model, is now available to select creators in private preview. It generates high-quality images with incredible detail, high-quality lighting, fewer distracting artefacts, and significant improvements in their ability to render text. It will be available in three model variants: one optimised for speed, one balancing speed and quality, and one prioritising the highest quality images with the best text alignment. Upgrades to image-generation in Workspace and the Gemini app and web experience are coming soon. Imagen 3 will be available where Vertex AI and ImageFX are available, via waitlist.
Veo: Veo is Google’s most capable video generation model, capable of creating high-quality 1080p videos up to a minute or more long. Veo closely follows user prompts and offers unprecedented creative control, accurately following directions like quick zooming or slow-motion crane shots. It captures the nuance and emotional tone of prompts in various visual styles, from photorealism to animation, and maintains consistency across complex details. Veo builds upon years of generative video model work and combines architecture, scaling laws, and novel techniques to improve latency and output resolution. Starting today, Veo is available to select creators in private preview in VideoFX by joining the waitlist.
Music AI tools: Our collaborations with the music community: Google is collaborating with musicians, songwriters, and producers, in partnership with YouTube, to better understand the role of AI in music creation. They are developing a suite of music AI tools that can create instrumental sections, transfer styles between tracks, and more. These collaborations inform the development of generative music technologies like Lyria, Google’s most advanced family of models for AI music generation. New experimental music created with these tools by Grammy winner Wyclef Jean, electronic musician Marc Rebillet, songwriter Justin Tranter, and others was released on their respective YouTube channels at I/O.
SynthID for text and video: Google is extending SynthID to text and video, allowing for watermarking of AI-generated content. SynthID can now embed a digital watermark directly into the pixels of an image or video, making it imperceptible to the human eye but detectable for identification. This technology will be integrated into Gemini and Search’s creative queries.
AI Test Kitchen: AI Test Kitchen is expanding its reach, now available in over 100 countries and territories, including several in Sub-Saharan Africa like Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and more. Users can now experience and provide feedback on Google’s latest AI technologies, like ImageFX and MusicFX, in 37 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.
