Google announced a flurry of artificial intelligence products — but users might need AI just to understand them all.
The Alphabet Inc unit on Wednesday demonstrated or referenced at least 15 different AI products and features ranging from software solely for creating smartphone wallpaper to another for organising personal files to yet another for photo editing.
Attendees of Google’s I/O conference in Mountain View, California, could be forgiven for leaving the annual event with their heads spinning. Take one of Google’s press releases from the event: “Duet AI serves as your expert pair programmer and assists cloud users with contextual code completion, offering suggestions tuned to your code base, generating entire functions in real-time, and assisting you with code reviews and inspections.”
For what seemed like every one of Google’s myriad products, the company had a distinct AI aide. Those wishing for snappier text messages can turn to a new assistant called Magic Compose that can transform more mundane prose into something sounding like William Shakespeare. If that’s not mellifluous enough, Google’s new MusicLM AI can make literal music out of the text. Or there’s Sidekick to help you compose better documents in Google Docs. The company’s Perspectives AI finds personal stories from videos, blogs and social media posts to augment answers to search queries.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment.
“There were a lot of buzzwords and a lot of different products,” said Dan Ives, a Wedbush analyst. “I call it a smorgasbord.”
If the two-hour keynote felt like a word salad, there were nonetheless meaty business needs behind the buffet of announcements. Google is in a heated race with rival Microsoft Corp to maintain its sizeable lead in search and the estimated $300 billion total market for ads.
