No. 1: Google Cloud’s Focus In 2023: Generative AI

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company is at an “inflection point” in AI and the need to launch new products is more important than ever before.

“We have an opportunity to make AI even more helpful for people, for businesses, for communities, for everyone,” Pichai said during Google’s I/O 2023 event in May. “We’ve been applying AI to make our products radically more helpful for a while. With generative AI, we’re taking the next step.”

Google has injected generative AI capabilities inside flagship products in 2023 while also consistently adding new features to its conversational chatbot Bard. One big launch was the new Generative AI App Builder in 2023, which Google says is now the fastest way for developers to jumpstart the creation of AI apps such as bots, chat apps, digital assistants and custom search engines, with limited technical expertise required.

On the enterprise front, Google Cloud recently launched PaLM API, a developer offering to make it easier and safer to experiment with Google’s large langue models (LLMs). PaLM API provides access to models that are optimized for multi-turn use cases— such as content generation and chat, as well as general-purpose models optimized for areas like summarization and classification. PaLM 2 was launched in May and offers stronger models in logic and reasoning.

Another new offering is Duet AI for Google Cloud, which is an AI-powered collaborator to help cloud users of all skill levels solve their everyday work challenges. Google Cloud also recently enabled generative AI support for Vertex AI, which is the company’s machine learning platform for training and deploying ML models and AI applications.

“We remain deeply committed to responsible generative AI,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian this year. As mentioned in previous slides, Google has also built new partner programs and formed new AI vendor partnerships to drive generative AI market momentum.

The Takeaway : Since OpenAI’s ChatGPT sent shockwaves throughout the world in late 2022, Google Cloud has been investing more resources in generative AI than ever before to ride the new wave of AI. Google has the willpower, workforce and war chest to become one of the biggest AI companies on Earth. This year’s strategy proved that Google plans to do just that.