Tech Minutes: Reflections from Google I/O 2024

Tech Minutes: Reflections from Google I/O 2024
With AI ruling the tech milieu, Google advances another step towards taming this technology and asserting on the idea of AI dominance at its annual conference. Google has quoted in bold letters that “This is AI Era” by means of its annual conference! 

Google’s annual conference is indeed an awaited event for the thousands and millions of mobile users, developers, techies and those having a knack of staying abreast with the slightest progress in the technological arena.

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Continuing the legacy from the previous conference, Google I/O 2024 laid considerable stress on AI technologies with a view to revolutionize the user-device interaction with its milestone innovations. The important technological interventions of Google for the year are summarised below.


Introducing Gemini 1.5

  • Google announced two of its flagship AI models Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash.
  • Gemini 1.5 Pro has been equipped with the ability to process vast amount of data say a 1500 pages-long document or an hour long video within considerably lesser time together with the skill to tackle with complex queries.
  • Gemini 1.5 Flash is more of a cost-efficient model curated on the basis of user feedback. Gemini AI comes with an enhanced productivity coupled with a smooth blend across Google services.
  • Moreover Gemini 1.5 Pro has been made accessible in over 35 languages globally expanding its reach and efficiency. 

Comparison with leading foundation models

Gemini Nano is being added to the Google Chrome desktop for a wide array of tasks such as summarisation and ‘help me write’ function. This addition is expected to upgrade the quality of search, which forms a major portion of profit for Google.

There is also an added ability to upload files via Google Drive or directly from device right into Gemini Advanced. Gemini Advanced has a new planning feature which is not limited to list of suggested activities but will go up to create a custom itinerary for the user.

Google also announced more tools being connected to Gemini, including Google Calendar, Tasks, Keep and Clock making the user experience furthermore personalised and easy-going.

Gemini 1.5 Pro can understand, reason about and identify curious details in the 402-page transcripts from Apollo 11’s mission to the moon.

Android

It is improbable to expect that Google won’t bring in an innovative addition to Android and so Google is all decked up to enhance the Android experience.

Android 15 Logo
  • The most important update for Android is Google Assistant being taken over by Gemini.
  • Android 15 Beta 2 version is another upgrade introduced by Google. The latest OS is furnished with faster performance, better privacy, customisation and AI features to provide an improved experience. 
  • This represents a substantial step in the evolution of the mobile OS, combining AI with a user-centric design approach. Android 15 is definitely a promise to deliver an excellent mobile experience for both developers and end-users.
  • Google also demonstrated visual chatbot Project Astra which is designed to provide better outputs based on the contextual inputs. 
  • The ‘Circle to Search’ feature is now upgraded to support technical search, including those of mathematics, physics and chemistry. 
  • Talkback is an accessibility feature for Android devices that will help blind and low-vision people to use touch and spoken feedback to better interact with their devices.
  • A new, opt-in scam protection feature with Gemini Nano’s on-device AI to help detect scam phone calls in a privacy preserving way was also introduced at the conference. The feature is likely to roll out by the latter half of the year.

Workspace

Google Workspace
  • In a significant edit, in terms of update, Google workspace applications such as Drive, Gmail, Docs, Meet, etc, will now have Google 1.5 Pro as the Large Language Model (LLM), which will allow the users to have a better experience. 
  • AI in Workspace will help users to be more creative, boost their productivity, and transform how they work. Gemini for Workspace includes features such as ‘Help me write’ in Docs and Gmail, ‘Help me design’ in Slides, and ‘Help me organise’ in Sheets.
  • With the new side panel experience, coming first to Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive, users will be able to chat with Gemini to summarise, analyse, and generate content, leveraging insights from emails, documents, and more.
Google Gemini
Gemini in Docs side panel providing a summary and suggested prompts

Google Cloud

  • With a view to cater to the user needs of data analysis and security, Google cloud platform has also undergone an update by incorporating AI technology to give users efficient and safe mechanisms for managing their data. 
  • These include Vertex AI Platform, AutoML among others. Vertex is a single stop destination for all the needs of data scientists. Vertex AI offers access to Gemini models from Google capable of understanding virtually any input, combining different types of information, and generating almost any output.
  • AutoML allows developers to build custom machine learning models effortlessly. It enables developers with limited machine learning expertise to train high-quality models specific to their business needs.

Other Innovations

  • Google’s text-to-video generator Veo is all prepped up to create high-quality minute-long videos. As of now, it is available only for select creators as a private preview within VideoFX but is expected to open up for other users quite soon. 
  • A similar private preview is open in case of Imagen 3, which is a text-to-image generator. Imagen 3 works well enough to deliver accurate results by filtering artificial from the realistic.
  • Google also highlighted Music AI Sandbox, a collection of music AI tools which allows music enthusiasts to create music effortlessly by hovering through an array of options available

To sum up

Google is tabling impressive innovations with special emphasis on AI technology and the road ahead looks pretty wide in terms of exploring the potential of AI for the tech-environment. At the helm of this revolution, CEO Sundar Pichai categorically mentioned in his keynote address that Google is all set to revolutionise the era of technological advancement with AI.

“We’ve been investing in AI for more than a decade—and innovating at every layer of the stack: research, product, infrastructure, and we’re going to talk about it all today,” he said.
“Still, we are in the early days of the AI platform shift. We see so much opportunity ahead for creators, for developers, for startups, for everyone. Helping to drive those opportunities is what our Gemini era is all about.”

With so much hustle created with the addition of AI, it will definitely be worth knowing as to what other treasures this technology holds within itself!