In case you missed it: Gemini AI at Google Cloud Next 2024

As expected, AI enabled many of the key updates from Google. Though AI has been steadily improving for years now, we’ve experienced unprecedented breakthroughs in the last year. Perhaps this is the reason that most of the key highlights from the Google Cloud Next announcements revolve around AI.

The Google Cloud Next 2024 keynote unveiled advancements poised to redefine cloud computing and business intelligence. Embracing the transformative potential of Gen AI, Google introduced Conversational Analytics as part of Gemini in Looker. This revolutionizes how users engage with data through natural language interactions and empowers organizations to foster a data-driven decision-making culture by enabling effortless access to insights in seconds.

With a focus on simplicity and efficiency, Google Cloud showcased a range of new capabilities, including report generation, advanced visualization assistance, automatic slide generation and formula assistance to streamline analytics tasks and workflows. As businesses navigate the complexities of the AI era, Google Cloud reaffirmed its commitment to providing reliable intelligence and empowering users to unlock new possibilities in data-driven innovation.

There are big changes coming to Google Workspace to delight both casual users and professionals who rely on the platform.

• First, Google announced that Google Vids, an AI video creation application, will appear alongside the classic creator tools such as Google Docs, Sheets and Slides in June of 2024.
• Google Chat is also soon to have a popular collaborator—Gemini. Google announced that it will introduce Gemini AI in Google chat as a preview to summarize conversations, answer questions and generate response suggestions.

Many conference insights stemmed from the use cases presented during the Google Next sessions. Between adopting Gen AI to improve customer experience to leveraging Google Cloud to build operations platforms, the impact of Google-powered solutions is tangible.

For GFT, this is evident in the launch of a GenAI Intelligent Assistant, an interface for retail banks. Built from Google’s Vertex AI platform, this tool utilizes Advanced AI Large Language Models (LLMs) to revolutionize user experience and customer interaction. This offering creates avenues of cost reduction and process efficiency for banks by providing a new way for customers to receive assistance and request services from the organization.

Emerging as a possible disruptor in business, AI agents had many big moments at the conference. These tools provide assistance in customer service, data management and even coding tasks. With the announcement that AI agents will integrate into new platforms, such as Google Vids, as well as existing ones, Google may pressure adjacent providers with these offerings. Call centers, document management teams and analytics centers may embrace this trend in their operations, but only time will tell how much traction AI agents have— and how they will disrupt industries.

Google’s Vertex is packaged as a one-stop shop for AI, providing a space for experimentation and development. With accessibility for citizen developers to build basic models as well as open source and Google model integration to support expert’s needs, Vertex proves itself to be flexible and efficient. With industry-specific pre-built AI solutions, this model may be an ideal starting point for businesses seeking to future-proof operations with AI.

Developed by Google DeepMind, the Gemini family models were first announced in December of 2023. Since then, this Gen AI model has only improved—which was a primary topic of sessions, demonstrations and conversations at Google Cloud Next.

Gemini is designed to seamlessly understand and combine different types of information, including text, code, audio, image and video, making the model highly adaptable and flexible across a range of tasks for developers and cloud teams. Google announced several new Gemini AI capabilities to transform processes in data analytics, cloud management and more, including:

The announcement of Gemini’s compatibility with Looker, Google’s self-service intelligence platform, marks a transformative shift for business intelligence (BI). Gemini in Looker harnesses the power of generative AI to revolutionize how users engage with and derive insights from their data. At Google Cloud Next, Conversational Analytics was introduced as part of Gemini in Looker, offering a conversational experience for accessing insights, redefining the traditional BI process into a collaborative and intelligent conversation powered by AI. With Conversational Analytics, users can interact with their data as they would with a colleague, obtaining insights in seconds and enabling a data-driven decision-making culture across the organization.

Gemini in BigQuery is the new and improved version of Google Cloud Next 23’s Duet AI in BigQuery. It expedites data preparation to deliver business insights through filtered and organized data. Data analytics and management is crucial for all organizations, because growth requires decisions empowered by refined data. With this update, developers can build low-code visual data pipelines or even rebuild legacy platforms to accommodate organizations that prefer to preserve their existing systems while pursuing digital transformation.

Gemini Cloud Assist uses AI and real-time data on cloud operations to help teams optimize the lifecycle of cloud-powered applications. This not only makes application development faster but can help optimize operations and updates for applications. This simplifies tasks and accelerates all cloud management outcomes, including security, troubleshooting and feature deployment.

Google emphasizes responsibility and safety in Gemini's development. Through collaborations with external experts and partners, Google aims to ensure that this Gen AI tool is continuously expanding its capabilities while ensuring ethical and inclusive AI usage. As Gemini continues to interact and connect with various Google products, it empowers developers and enterprises to innovate and deliver impactful solutions, ultimately paving the way for a future where AI extends knowledge and transforms industries worldwide