Google’s Cloud Next 2024 event takes place in Las Vegas through Thursday, and that means plenty of new cloud-focused news on everything from Gemini, Google’s AI-powered chatbot, to AI to development and the safety. Last year’s event was the first in-person Cloud Next since 2019, and Google took the stage to demonstrate its continued commitment to AI with Duet AI for Gmail and several other debuts, including the expansion of Generative AI to its security product line and other enterprise-focused updates and debuts.
Don’t have time to watch the full archive of Google’s keynote? Okay; We’ve recapped the highlights of the event below, with additional details from the TechCrunch team on the ground at the event. And Tuesday’s updates weren’t the only things Google made available to non-participants — Wednesday’s developer-focused stream started at 10:30am. PT.
Google Vids
Harnessing artificial intelligence to help customers develop creative content is something Big Tech is looking for, and on Tuesday, Google unveiled its version. Google Vids, a new AI-powered video creation tool, is the latest feature added to Google Workspace.
Here’s how it works: Google claims users can make videos alongside other Workspace tools like Docs and Sheets. The editing, writing and production are all there. You can also collaborate with colleagues in real time on Google Vids. read more
Gemini Code Assist
After reading about Google’s new Gemini Code Assist, a business-focused AI code completion and assistance tool, you might be wondering if it sounds familiar. And you would be right. TechCrunch senior editor Frederic Lardinois writes that “Google previously offered a similar service under the now-defunct Duet AI brand.” Then came Didymos. Code Assist is a direct competitor to GitHub’s Copilot Enterprise. Here’s why
And to include Gemini Code Assist, Alex Wilhelm breaks down its competition with Copilot and its potential risks and benefits for developers, in the latest episode of TechCrunch Minute.
Google Workspace
Image Credits: Google
Among the new features are voice prompts to launch the AI-powered Help Me Write feature in Gmail while you’re on the go. Another one for Gmail includes a way to instantly turn draft emails into more polished email. In Sheets, you can send a customizable notification when a specific field changes. Meanwhile, a new set of templates makes it easy to start a new spreadsheet. For Doc fans, there is now support for tabs. That’s good because, according to the company, you can “organize information in a single document instead of linking to multiple documents or searching through Drive.” Of course, subscribers get the goodies first. read more
Google also appears to have plans to monetize two of its new AI features for its Google Workspace productivity suite. It will look like $10/month/user add-on packages. One will be about the new AI meetings and messaging plugin that takes notes for you, provides meeting summaries and translates content into 69 languages. The other is for the introduced the AI Security Pack, which helps administrators keep Google Workspace content more secure. read more
Figure 2
In February, Google announced an image generator built into Gemini, Google’s AI-powered chatbot. The company pulled it shortly after it was found to haphazardly inject gender and racial diversity into prompts about people. This resulted in some offensive inaccuracies. While we’ve been waiting for a possible re-release, Google has come out with its improved imaging tool, Imagen 2. This is inside the Vertex AI developer platform and is more focused on businesses. Imagen 2 is now generally available and comes with some fun new features including inpainting and outpainting. There is also what Google calls it “images that turn into live text” where you can now create short four-second videos from text messages, according to AI-powered clip-making tools such as Airport runway, Spades and Irreverent Labs. read more
Vertex AI Agent Builder
We can all use a little help, right? Meet Google’s Vertex AI Agent Builder, a new tool that helps companies build AI agents.
“Vertex AI Agent Builder allows people to create agents very easily and quickly,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian. “You can build and deploy production-ready, productive AI chat agents and coach and mentor them the same way you do with humans to improve the quality and correctness of responses from models.”
To do this, the company uses a process called “grounding,” where responses are linked to what is considered a reliable source. In this case, it’s based on Google Search (which actually might or might not be accurate). read more
Gemini comes to databases
Google calls Gemini in Databases a collection of features that “simplify all aspects of the database journey.” In less fancy language, it’s a set of AI-based, developer-focused tools for Google Cloud customers who create, monitor, and migrate application databases. read more
Google is renewing its focus on data dominance
Image Credits: MirageC/Getty Images
Google has offered cloud dominance in the past, but is now focusing more on partnerships rather than building them on its own. read more
Security tools love AI
Image Credits: Getty Images
Google is jumping on the AI-powered security tool train with a slew of new products and features aimed at large enterprises. These include Threat Intelligence, which can analyze large chunks of potentially malicious code. It also allows users to perform natural language searches for persistent threats or indicators of compromise. Another is Chronicle, Google’s cybersecurity telemetry offering for cloud customers to help with cybersecurity investigations. The third is the Security Command Center enterprise cyber security and risk management suite. read more
Nvidia’s Blackwell platform
One of the expected announcements is the next generation of Nvidia’s Blackwell platform coming to Google Cloud in early 2025. Yes, that seems that far away. However, here’s what to expect: support for the high-performance Nvidia HGX B200 for AI and HPC workloads and GB200 NBL72 for training large language models (LLM). Oh, and we can reveal that the GB200 servers will be liquid 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 mostly about the security capabilities of the existing service, based on the knowledge that browsers are now the endpoints where most of the high-value work is done within a company. read more
Gemini 1.5 Pro
Image Credits: Google
Anyone can use “half” every now and then, and Google obliges Gemini 1.5 Pro. This, writes Kyle Wiggers, is “Google’s most capable AI production model yet,” and it’s now available in public preview on Vertex AI, Google’s enterprise AI development platform. Here’s what you get for this half: Tthe frame size that can be processed, which is from 128,000 tokens to 1 million tokens, where “tokens” refer to subdivided bits of raw data (such as the syllables “fan”, “tas”, and “tic” in the word “fantasy” ). read more
Open source tools
Image Credits: Getty Images
At Google Cloud Next 2024, the company introduced a number of open source tools aimed primarily at supporting AI projects and infrastructure. One is Max Diffusion, which is a collection of reference implementations of various diffusion models running on XLA or Accelerated Linear Algebra devices. Then there’s JetStream, a new engine for running AI models. The third is MaxTest, a collection of AI models that generate text and target Nvidia’s TPUs and GPUs in the cloud. read more
Axion
Image Credits: Google
We don’t know much about it, but here’s what we do know: Google Cloud joins AWS and Azure by announcing its first custom Arm processor, called Axion. Frederic Lardinois writes that “based on Arm’s Neoverse 2 designs, Google says its Axion instances offer 30% better performance than other Arm-based instances from competitors like AWS and Microsoft, and up to 50% better performance and 60% better energy efficiency than comparable X86-based instances.” read more
The entire Google Cloud Next keynote
If all of that isn’t enough of a deluge of AI and cloud updates, you can watch the entire event keynote via the embed below.
Google Cloud Next Developer Keynote
On Wednesday, Google held a separate keynote for developers. They offered a deeper dive into a range of tools outlined during Tuesday’s keynote, including Gemini Cloud Assist, using AI for product recommendations and chat agents, ending with a showcase from Hugging Face. You can watch the full keynote below.
