mountain view Google CEO Sundar Pichai is putting his faith in artificial intelligence (AI). “We use AI to make our products radically more useful,” announced the CEO on Wednesday at the annual I/O developer conference. The text robot Bard, for example, will be improved and unlocked for all users. Google Internet search is being expanded with AI solutions. In addition, AI is to be integrated into products such as the e-mail service Gmail and the map service Maps.
Bard was Google’s answer to the success of the text robot ChatGPT from the start-up OpenAI. Two months ago, Bard was initially activated for selected users in the USA and England. In tests, however, Bard performed significantly weaker than ChatGPT and produced several errors during the first product presentation. In response, Google parent company Alphabet lost around $100 billion in stock market valuation.
With an update to the new language model PaLM 2, the capabilities of Bard should now be greatly improved. “Bard has gotten much better,” promised the responsible Google manager Sissie Hsiao. This applies, for example, to mathematical calculations or writing computer code. In addition, Bard will be multimodal in the future, meaning that it will not only understand text input, but will also be able to analyze images, for example.
Google CEO Pichai also announced that there will be a compressed version of PaLM that will run locally on modern smartphones. She has slimmed down slightly but is still able to help write computer code.
The announcements were received positively on the stock exchange. The share of the Google parent company Alphabet increased by around five percent.
The announcements by the Alphabet CEO were positively received on the stock exchange. The stock went up.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
The competition for supremacy between Microsoft and Google in AI is entering the decisive phase, said analyst Dan Ives from Wedbusch. “As the demand for AI applications increases across industries, we see the improvements and integrations of generative AI in Google’s entire portfolio as positive in the fight for AI.” However, Microsoft has already presented through the partnership with OpenAI. Google is lagging behind and has to catch up, says Ives.
EU countries initially left out
However, German is not initially available as the language for many of the innovations. Bard now supports Japanese and Korean in addition to English. Other languages are to follow. When asked, however, Google did not provide any information as to when a German-language version would also be activated. When asked, the company said, “Bard will soon be able to support the world’s 40 major languages and the timeline for expansion plans is not yet finalized.” The company is working closely with regulators.
Not only that: the English version will not be available either in Germany or in the European Union as a whole. Google expanded the Bard offer to 180 countries, but none of them is an EU country. The company did not provide specific information about the reasons.
The Microsoft counterpart Bing, which is operated with the OpenAI AI system, is already available in Germany and other EU countries. In Italy, OpenAI with its text robot ChatGPT was initially stopped by the data protection authority, but can be used again after initial adjustments. It was initially unclear why exactly Google is excluding the EU and is likely to further increase the gap to Microsoft and OpenAI.
>> Read here: Where’s Watson? How IBM took the lead in AI – and lost it again
Due to a cooperation with the image specialist Adobe, Bard should also be able to create artificially generated images on command in the future. Again, Google did not provide any information about the start of the functions.
Google rival Microsoft is a close partner of OpenAI. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced plans to integrate OpenAI’s AI technologies into all of the company’s products. This includes AI support in Office products such as Word, Powerpoint and Excel.
Google has now announced similar functions for its own solutions. Under the name Duet AI, Google customers should be able to use an AI companion that can help with writing texts, create images for presentations or produce spreadsheets for business calculations. “We will roll out these functions over the course of the year,” said the responsible Google manager Aparna Pappu.
Google is expanding internet search with the first AI functions
Google also wants to add AI-controlled functions to its core product Internet search. In the future, the search should be significantly better at understanding complex queries. During her presentation, Google employee Cathy Edwards had suitable bicycles selected for a hilly, five-mile route. “Google can now understand even complicated search inputs,” promised Edwards. Google summarizes the functions under the term “Search Generative Experience”. They are to be made available to test users “in the coming weeks”, but initially only in the USA and only in English.
In contrast to Microsoft, however, Google largely retained the classic approach to Internet searches. Microsoft’s new Bing, on the other hand, works like a chat, with questions and answers. Links to relevant pages are listed there as sources for an answer. Google, on the other hand, sticks to the classic list of websites as a result of an Internet search and expands the offer with additional information based on AI.
>> Read here: “A lot of things just take too long” – fewer and fewer foreign companies are coming to Germany
Internet search is still the most important product of Google today. The provider claims around 90 percent of the search business in the USA and many other countries such as Germany. Bing’s market share is in the single-digit percentage range.
During the presentation, Google brought in several managers from pioneer customers. This also included Deutsche Bank. Technology boss at Deutsche Bank, Bernd Leukert, spoke in a short video sequence during the presentation that AI could help to improve contact with customers. However, he did not provide any specific information on the use of Google’s technology. Deutsche Bank and Google announced a strategic partnership in 2020 and stated that they wanted to develop products together.
More: From human resources to drive-thru: Artificial intelligence is supposed to take over these jobs in the USA