Google's Cloud Next 2024 event runs through Thursday in Las Vegas. That means a lot of new cloud-focused news from Google's AI-powered chatbot, Gemini, on everything from AI to his DevOps and security. Last year's event was the first in-person Cloud Next since 2019, and Google took to the stage to share its continuation in AI, including Duet AI for Gmail and many other debuts, as well as the expansion of generative AI into its security product line. demonstrated their efforts. From other enterprise updates and debuts.
Don't have time to see the full archive of Google's keynote event? That's okay; we've summarized the most important parts of the event below, with additional information from the TechCrunch team on-site. And Tuesday's update wasn't the only update Google made available to non-participants, as Wednesday's developer-focused stream began at 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time.
Google video
Leveraging AI to help customers develop creative content is what big tech companies are looking for, and on Tuesday Google announced its version. Google Vids, a new AI-powered video creation tool, is the latest addition to Google Workspace.
Here's how it works: Google claims that users can create videos alongside other Workspace tools such as Docs and Sheets. All editing, writing, and production is done here. You can also collaborate with colleagues in real time within Google Vids.read more
gemini code assist
After reading about Google's new Gemini Code Assist, an AI code completion and assistance tool for enterprises, you might be asking yourself if this sounds familiar. And you would be right. “Google previously offered a similar service under the now-defunct Duet AI brand,” TechCrunch senior editor Frederic Lardinois wrote. Then along came Gemini. Code Assist is a direct competitor to GitHub's Copilot Enterprise.The reason is as follows
And to put Gemini Code Assist in context, in the latest episode of TechCrunch Minute, Alex Wilhelm details the competition with Copilot and the potential risks and benefits for developers.
Google Workspace
Among the new features is a voice prompt to start Gmail's AI-based “Help me write” feature on the go. Another method for Gmail includes a way to instantly turn a rough email draft into a more polished email. Spreadsheets can send customizable alerts when certain fields change. Meanwhile, a new set of templates makes it easy to start a new spreadsheet. For document lovers, tabs are now supported. According to the company, this is great because it allows you to “organize your information within a single document, rather than linking to multiple documents or searching in Drive.” Of course, subscribers receive the benefits first.read more
Google also appears to be planning to monetize two new AI features in its Google Workspace productivity suite. This would be like an add-on package for $10 per user per month. One is for a new AI meetings and messaging add-on that takes notes, provides meeting summaries, and translates content into 69 languages. The other is for the introduced AI Security Package, which helps admins keep Google Workspace content more secure.read more
imagen 2
In February, Google announced an image generator built into its AI-powered chatbot Gemini. The company reversed this action shortly after it was discovered that it was randomly incorporating gender and racial diversity into its people prompts. This resulted in some offensive inaccuracies. While waiting for the eventual re-release, Google announced Imagen 2, an improved image generation tool. It is within the Vertex AI developer platform and is enterprise-focused. Imagen 2 is now generally available and comes with some fun new features, including in-paint and out-paint. There's also what Google calls “Text to Live Images,” which can now create short 4-second videos of him from text prompts, similar to AI-powered clip generation tools like Runway, Pika, and Irreverent Labs. Ta.read more
Vertex AI Agent Builder
We could all use a little help, right? Google's Vertex AI Agent Builder is a new tool to help enterprises build AI agents.
“Vertex AI Agent Builder makes it incredibly easy and fast to build conversational agents,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kuran. “By building and deploying production-ready conversational agents powered by generative AI that can be directed and guided like a human, we can improve the quality and accuracy of answers from our models. Masu.”
To do this, the company uses a process called “grounding,” which connects answers to information that it considers reliable sources. In this case, you're relying on a Google search (which may or may not actually be accurate).read more
Gemini comes to the database
Google calls the collection of features that “simplify every aspect of databases” Gemini in Databases. In less jargon, it's a bundle of AI-powered developer tools for Google Cloud customers who create, monitor, and migrate app databases.read more
Google puts renewed emphasis on data sovereignty
Image credit: MirageC / Getty Images
Google has always offered cloud sovereignty, but now it's focused on partnerships rather than building it in-house.read more
Security tools are loved by AI
Google is commercializing AI-powered generative security tools with a host of new products and features for large enterprises. These include threat intelligence that can analyze a large portion of potentially malicious code. Users can also perform natural language searches to find signs of ongoing threats and compromises. Another is Chronicle, Google's cybersecurity telemetry product for cloud customers that assists with cybersecurity investigations. The third is Security Command Center, an enterprise cybersecurity and risk management suite.read more
Nvidia's Blackwell platform
One expected announcement is that Nvidia's next-generation Blackwell platform will be coming to Google Cloud in early 2025. Yes, that seems very far away. However, what you can expect here is support for the high-performance Nvidia HGX B200 for AI and HPC workloads and the GB200 NBL72 for large-scale language model (LLM) training. Oh, and it's also revealed that the GB200 servers will be water-cooled.read more
Chrome Enterprise Premium
Meanwhile, Google is expanding its Chrome Enterprise product suite with the release of Chrome Enterprise Premium. What's new here is that it's primarily concerned with the security features of existing services, based on the insight that the browser is now the endpoint where most of the high-value work within the enterprise takes place.read more
gemini 1.5 pro
Image credit: Google
Everyone can use “half” from time to time, and Google is mandating it with Gemini 1.5 Pro. Kyle Wiggers wrote that it is “Google's most capable generative AI model,” and it is currently available in public preview on Vertex AI, Google's enterprise AI development platform. Here's what you get for half of that: The amount of context that can be processed ranges from 128,000 tokens up to 1 million tokens. Here, “tokens” refer to subdivided bits of raw data (syllables “fan”, “tas”, etc.). “tic'' in the word “great'').read more
open source tools
At Google Cloud Next 2024, the company announced a number of open source tools primarily aimed at supporting generative AI projects and infrastructure. One is Max Diffusion, which is a collection of reference implementations of various diffusion models running on Accelerated Linear Algebra (XLA) devices. Then there's Jetstream, a new engine for running generative AI models. The third is MaxTest, a collection of text generation AI models targeting his TPUs and Nvidia GPUs in the cloud.read more
Axion
We don't know much about this, but here's what we do know. Google Cloud joins his AWS and Azure in announcing the first custom-built Arm processor called Axion. Frederic Lardinois writes: “Based on Arm's Neoverse 2 design, Google says its Axion instances offer 30% better performance than other Arm-based instances from competitors such as AWS and Microsoft, and up to It says it offers 50% better performance and 60% better energy efficiency”-based instances. ” read more
Complete Google Cloud Next keynote
If that deluge of AI and cloud updates isn't enough for you, you can watch the event's keynote in its entirety in the embed below.
Google Cloud Next Developer Keynote
On Wednesday, Google held another keynote for developers. They detailed many of the tools outlined in Tuesday's keynote, including Gemini Cloud Assist, which uses AI for product recommendations and chat agents, and ended with a showcase of Hugging Face. The full text of the keynote speech can be viewed below.