Google AI

The boost of ChatGPT and other generative AI products has catapulted the technology into places that no one would have expected, and that now includes the Wendy’s drive-through, which is getting an AI makeover with the help of Google.

AI coming to Google Search is more than a given at this point, and a new report details how the search engine is set for what sounds like a massive overhaul to boost its relevance and match how people are now finding information.

Here’s a first look at the upcoming generative AI-powered “Magic Compose” feature coming to Google Messages, which can write a meaningful reply to a message or wax poetic with a song.

In late March, Google started letting the public test generative AI in Gmail and Docs. It’s now expanding the Trusted Tester program by a significant degree.

Google is preparing to make its Bard AI easier to access on Pixel phones and tablets, starting with an upcoming homescreen widget exclusive to the company’s devices.

Last year, Area 120 announced “Checks” to help Android and iOS app developers with privacy compliance. Following the incubator’s demise, Checks is “now a fully integrated Google product” that leverages AI and large language models (LLMs).

As generative AI has exploded in popularity over just the past several months, the concerns of misinformation and other impacts of the technology are growing. This week, “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton has departed his position at Google, worried that no one will be able to tell “what is true anymore.”

Besides Magi, a new report today details what other generative AI features Google is working on across Image Search and Chrome, including a browser chatbot.

Generative AI coming to Google Search is a given at this point, and a new report today details that it’s happening in two stages, with project “Magi” arriving imminently.

One smart thing that OpenAI did with GPT was give its (large language) model a user-facing versioning system that people are very aware of. Google Bard is starting to do something similar with an “Experiment updates” changelog for Bard.

Phone calling is one of the biggest areas where Google uses AI to differentiate the Pixel experience. More advanced Pixel Call Screen capabilities that take advantage of conversational AI are now being teased.

Project Starline is Google’s immersive video conferencing booth where you and the participant are represented “in 3D at natural scale, enabling eye contact, and providing spatially accurate audio.” Google set out to quantify why Project Starline is “more natural.”

In 2016, Google Assistant was announced as “your own personal Google,” and Sundar Pichai believes it has the AI “technology to actually do those things now.” The Google CEO was interviewed by the New York Times on Bard and the broader state of AI.

To date, Bard has used LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), which is focused on conversational dialogue, and Google is now incorporating PaLM (Pathways Language Model) for improved math and logic capabilities, with “coding coming soon.”

Google gave an overview of what generative AI features are coming to Workspace apps two weeks ago and is now beginning public testing in Gmail and Docs.

The AI wars are very much ongoing, with Google a bit late to the party. In a new report, Google’s Bard is accused of using ChatGPT responses shared online as training data, but Google denies the claim.

Large language models (LLMs), like Google Bard, are trained on “trillions of words” to learn how humans talk and predict/generate the next words in a sentence that make for a good response. However, this technology is not actually aware of what’s factually correct. Given the newness of it, some are – understandably – not yet aware of this fact. In the case of Bard, one particular phenomenon that has occurred days, if not hours, after the early access launch is that people are equating its responses with official Google news and announcements. 

Following last week’s announcement, here’s an early look at generative AI in Gmail for Android, with Google possibly beginning testing with a limited feature set.

Have you ever been unsure of how best to reply to a friend? Google Messages is readying a new AI generation feature that could make replying to text messages easy as can be.

Following this morning’s expansion, Google is heavily using its Pixel, Nest, and other consumer-facing brands to invite people to use Bard.