Google launches next-gen AI tools for Gmail, collaboration and cloud software

Alphabet’s Google on Tuesday unveiled a slew of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for its messaging, collaboration and cloud software, taking aim at Microsoft days before its rival made a similar announcement.

In a replay of the tech giants’ dueling chatbot launches last month, Alphabet touted a “magic wand” for its popular Google Docs software that can write a marketing blog, training plan or other text, then revise its tone at the discretion of users, a company official demonstrated to reporters.

Microsoft, meanwhile, teased an event Thursday about how it’s “reimagining productivity with AI,” which is set to feature its rival word processor.

Alphabet also said its AI will be able to summarize message threads in Gmail, create slide presentations, personalize customer outreach and take meeting notes as part of its upgrade to Google Workspace. , a suite of products with billions of users on free and paid accounts.

The advances reflect how ChatGPT spurred a race in Silicon Valley to imbue products with so-called generative AI, which learns from past data how to create content again, much like the chatbot feel.

Microsoft, Alphabet and their peers are investing billions of dollars to create and deploy the technology, hoping that the business they will gain by accelerating the writing and creation tasks of office workers will far exceed the costs of those efforts.

“This next phase is where we get humans to be supported by an AI collaborator, working in real time,” Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said during a press briefing.

Alphabet is giving approved test users access to new Workspace features on a rolling basis throughout the year, ahead of a broader launch, similar to this one, and Microsoft’s gradual release of their chatbot programs. .

Kurian declined to say how much the upgraded workspace might cost businesses or consumers.

AI Generated Corgi

Google also unveiled a range of generative AI tools for its cloud computing customers, for example previewing access to PaLM, one of its most powerful “big language models” that create text like human.

Google said customers can refine its AI model with their own data while keeping the insights and benefits exclusive.

In another enterprise software example, Google showed how a fictional furniture company could create better customer service chatbots that could generate images as well as text, such as showing what a corgi dog would look like on a modern chair in the mid-century.

The chatbot could integrate with a payment system so that a buyer could then purchase the chair, a promotional video showed.

Google aims for its AI to “transform” the work of marketers, lawyers, scientists and educators, according to the video.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced a partnership with top AI research lab Midjourney, with Google to provide cloud infrastructure, including its custom “TPU” chips.

Microsoft’s deployment of generative AI has so far outpaced that of Alphabet, which is wary of societal damage as well as damage to its reputation as a trusted source of information.

These softwares are still prone to inaccurate responses called “hallucinations”.

A factual error that Alphabet’s chatbot Bard made during a demo last month contributed to a $100 billion (nearly Rs. 8,23,300 crore) drop in its market value, although Microsoft came under scrutiny when its Bing search chatbot professed love or made threats. to test users.

Kurian said Google remains “deeply committed to responsible AI,” giving controls to customers and reviewing the appropriate use of its products. Microsoft has also added safeguards to its search software.

© Thomson Reuters 2023