Search giants Google recently held its I/O keynote event where it made some big announcements on its Pixel devices and its latest advances in artificial intelligence.
After months of lagging behind other tech companies like Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta in launching AI features of its own, Google has unveiled some pretty interesting AI features that many users will find useful and we’ve outlined them below.
Bard is now available to all
Google’s anticipated AI-powered chatbot Bard, which was initially available to users in the UK is now available to everyone, including individuals who weren’t on the waitlist.
The search giants has also released PaLM 2, its general-purpose AI model which can not only be used to power other chatbots, but also translate languages, write computer code and respond to images.
Slav Petrov, co-lead of the PaLM 2 project said, “We’re really excited to make these models available broadly externally, because we want to see what people can do with them. We believe that they will open up a lot of opportunities to do things that were previously thought magic and really out of reach, but that now can be accomplished thanks to the amazing progress in machine learning that we’ve seen over the last years.”
Users can interact with PaLM 2 through Bard, which now features a new dark mode and visual search as the tech firm looks to add more features in the future.
Android devices get AI-powered features
Apparently, Google’s plan to roll out AI features to its users is not only for Google Search. The company announced that it is bringing new AI-powered features to Android devices, some of which will let users respond to text messages using an AI feature called Magic Compose or even create their own wallpapers using AI.
Rather than choosing their wallpaper from a list of premade system options as they usually would, Android users will soon be able to describe an image to the AI which will then generate a wallpaper by utilising Google’s text-to-image diffusion model.
AI-powered snapshots for Google Search
Another one of the tech firm’s reveals is that its widely used Google Search is getting a grand update called AI snapshots. The AI snapshots is available to use for users who opt into a new feature called Search Generative Experience (SGE).
After a user opts in, they’ll start to see AI-powered responses at the top of their search results for certain queries that’ll provide better context to their search. It’s also worth adding that these snapshots are powered by PaLM 2, which is currently powering more than 20 Google services.
Adobe brings Firefly to Bard
After launching the beta in March, Adobe has now partnered with Google to bring its Firefly text-to-image generators into Bard. The collaboration will allow users to describe the image they want and it’ll be generated almost instantly in Bard.
Adobe says that after an image is generated using Bard, users, “Will have the ability to edit and further modify it using [Adobe] Express.” The software company also says that it will use the Content Authenticity Initiative’s (CAI) open-source Content Credentials technology to ensure transparency for the images generated.
“This will tell you if an image was created by a human or generated with AI,” Adobe wrote in a post.
These announcements from Google show that the company has fully entered the AI competitive sphere with the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta by making Bard available to use globally and bringing AI features to its search engine that’s used by billions across the world.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
