Tag: Google AI

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Report indicates Google will soon offer new AI tools in its ad program

Kitchener, Ontario, Canada – September 30, 2019: Google sign in the Google Canada Kitchener-Waterloo office.

The latest Google service to get the AI treatment, according to a report from The Financial Times, is its mammoth-sized advertisement business.

Allegedly, Google’s AI will soon be able to “remix” customer images, video, and text that it is given to work with. The Financial Times says the AI will then generate ads based on specified goals such as target audience.

The new toolset is expected to be rolled into Google’s existing Performance Max program, adding an element of artificial creativity to the campaign service.

The news comes amid a growing AI arms race between major tech companies. Google has been scrambling to modernize its search engine in the wake of a revitalized Bing, powered by ChatGPT.

With the pressure on, some are sounding the alarm on the speed of developments on the AI front, including Elon Musk.

Google’s new AI tools will reportedly be making their way to the public later this year.

Source: The Verge Via: The Financial Times

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Mobile Syrup

Google starts offering limited access to its Bard AI chatbot

Google unveiled its ChatGPT competitor Bard in early February. At the time, the company said that its AI chatbot would go public in the coming weeks.

Now, Google is opening up limited access to Bard in the U.S. and the U.K., as shared by CEO Sundar Pichai on Twitter, and you can join the waitlist here. According to Google, the rollout for Bard will be slow, and the company did not provide a date for a wider rollout.

‘Bard’ will be able to answer user inquiries and participate in conversations in a human-like manner, similar to how ChatGPT functions. The service is powered by LaMDA, with which the chatbot would be able to interact with users to explore complex topics, collaborate in real-time and provide new and creative ideas.

“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models,” wrote Google in its initial press release. “Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.”

However, the company also warns that Bard is an early experiment that is intended to help people boost their productivity, but it is not a tool that is meant to replace its search engine, considering that similar to ChatGPT, Bard might also display inaccurate or offensive information.

It’s worth noting that in an early demo of Bard, the chatbot already shared inaccurate information. In a blog post by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, an example of the chatbot’s capabilities was shown off. When asked, “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?” the chatbot shared three simple-to-understand points, one of them being that “JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.” JWST did not take the very first picture of an exoplanet. The first image of an exoplanet was taken back in 2004, by the VLT (Very Large Telescope), stationed in Cerro Paranal, Antofagasta, Chile, while the JWST only became operational in 2022.

In a statement given to The Verge about Bard’s inaccuracy, a Google spokesperson said, “This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program. We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.” Hopefully, Google has fixed the issues with Bard, and going forward, it won’t make such blatant mistakes.

Source: @sundarpichai

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Mobile Syrup

Google unveils its AI chatbot Bard and feature updates at Paris event

Following in Microsoft’s footsteps, Mountain View, California-based Google today, at its Live from Paris event, announced AI-focused updates to Search, Maps and Translate, via The Verge.

Just two days ago, on Monday, February 6th, Google announced that its ChatGPT competitor ‘Bard’ will be available to the public in the “coming weeks,” with Google CEO Sundar Pichai describing it as an “experimental conversational AI service” powered by LaMDA. The chatbot made an appearance at the event, where Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president at Google, said that users would be able to interact with Bard to explore complex topics, collaborate in real-time and get new and creative ideas.

Google then explained how some questions have No One Right Answer, or ‘NORA.’ This is applicable to questions like “what is the best constellation to look at when stargazing.” The answer to such questions is subjective, and hence, it has NORA. To help answer such queries, Google is introducing generative AI directly into Search results.

Soon, if you ask Google Search questions that have NORA, the new generative AI features would organize complex information and multiple viewpoints and opinions, and combine them in your search results.

Here are some of the other new announcements made across Google’s platforms, with some features releasing in the near future, and others in the coming weeks and months:

The Street View and Live View mixture, called Immersive View, is now beginning to roll out in five cities, namely London, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Tokyo. The feature will next expand to Florence, Venice, Amsterdam, Dublin, and more.

The multi-search tool that allows users to initiate a search using an image and a few words of text is also receiving an update. The feature allows users to take photos of objects like food, supplies, clothes and more, and add the phrase “near me” in the Google app to get search results showcasing local businesses, restaurants or retailers that carry that specific item. The feature was limited to the United States, but is now rolling out globally wherever Google Lens is available. The feature will also be available on mobile web globally in the next few months.

Under Google Maps, the company is adding new features to assist EV drivers, including suggested charge stops for shorter trips, filters for “very fast” charging stations and indications of places with chargers in search results for places like hotels and grocery stores.

Further, ‘Translate with Lens’ for images is now rolling out globally. Normally, if you’d translate the text on an image, the translated text would be added on top of the image as ‘extra text,’ and wouldn’t be blended in. This would block or distort the image behind the text. Now, with a new machine learning tool called ‘Generative Adversarial Networks’ (the same tool used in Pixel phones for Magic Eraser), Google Lens can translate the text, and blend it back into the background image without distorting it, making the image retain its natural look.

ETAs and turn-by-turn navigation via Google Maps would now be visible on your lock screen. The feature is also compatible with iOS 16’s Live Activities. Google Translate will also be introducing additional context and information for certain words or phrases, starting with English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish languages in the coming weeks. The new Google Translate design for Android will be available on iOS in the near future.

Follow the links to learn more about the new Search, Maps and Translate features.

Image credit: Google 

Source: Google, Via: The Verge

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Mobile Syrup

Google announces new immersive Google Maps features

Some exciting new immersive features are coming to Google Maps.

Announced as a part of today’s Search AI event, Google revealed that the previously teased Immersive View is launching today. This new view combines aerial photography and Google Street View, allowing users to explore full 3D models of cities.

The new Google Maps feature will, at least according to Google, allow users to “understand the vibe of a place before you go.” Alongside these 3D renderings come the same detailed traffic data, map suggestions, and more that Google Maps is known for.

GIF of immersive view, featuring multi-dimensional imagery of Oracle Park in San Francisco with information layered on top

Right now, Immersive View is only available for a handful of cities. But Google noted that more locales would arrive “in the coming months.”

At the same event, the tech giant also revealed a brand-new Maps feature it dubbed “glanceable directions.” This new feature allows users to see all the details of their trip right from the route overview screen, offering up information like distance to destination and estimated time of arrival. “Glanceable directions” will roll out “in the coming months.”

Also, Google mentioned that Indoor Street View is expanding to “more than 1,000 new airports, train stations, and malls in Barcelona, Berlin, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Melbourne, Paris, Prague, São Paulo, Singapore, Sydney, and Taipei.

Via: AndroidPolice

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Mobile Syrup

Google’s ChatGPT competitor ‘Bard’ to go public in the coming weeks

Last week, news came out that Google is reportedly testing its own ChatGPT-like chatbot called ‘Apprentice Bard.’

Now, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has confirmed the existence of the project, describing it as an “experimental conversational AI service” powered by LaMDA.

‘Bard’ will be able to answer user inquiries and participate in conversations in a human-like manner and is being released now to “trusted testers” before it goes public “in the coming weeks.”

Bard is similar to ChatGPT in the sense that it is all-knowing. According to Google, “Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models.” The AI service gathers information from the internet to provide fresh and high-quality responses. “Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills,” wrote Google.

Unlike ChatGPT, Google says that Bard uses less computing power, and thus, can be scaled to more users. It is also using external feedback alongside its own internal testing to make sure “Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”

It is evident that OpenAI’s decision to make ChatGPT freely available to the public is what triggered Google to go all hands on deck with Bard and make it functional as soon as possible. Another industry giant, Microsoft, is reportedly integrating ChatGPT to its Bing browser, as screenshots of the leaked browser leaked last week.

According to Pichai, AI is an exciting opportunity that can help people deepen their understanding of information and get to the heart of what they’re looking for. He adds that people head to Google for quick factual answers, like “how many keys does a piano have?”

Now, however, more and more people are turning to Google for deeper insights, with questions like “is the piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?” This indicates that people are looking for a diverse range of opinions and not just factual answers. Pichai says that AI can be helpful in such moments, “synthesizing insights for questions where there’s no one right answer.”

He also adds that users would soon see AI-powered features in Search, something which was hinted at in last week’s CNBC leak.

Another aspect pointed out by CNBC is that Bard will have up-to-date information, unlike ChatGPT, which is stuck in the year 2021. Pichai’s blog post doesn’t allude to that. Google was also reported to be testing alternate versions of its homepage. One of the versions reportedly gets rid of the “I’m feeling lucky’ button, and replaces it with prompts for potential questions users might wanna ask. This wasn’t hinted at, either.

The company is holding an AI-focused event about Search on Wednesday, February 8th, where we’ll likely learn more about the AI developments over at Google.

Image credit: Google

Source: Google

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Google is ‘all hands on deck’ to develop AI products to take on ChatGPT

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a machine-learning dependent AI chat bot that generates human-like responses based on the input it receives. The chatbot has taken the world by storm, having crossed one million users earlier this month.

The ChatGPT storm has been noticed by Google, and it is reportedly taking an ‘all hand on deck’ approach to respond.

As reported by The New York Times, Google has declared a “code red,” and has tasked several departments to “respond to the threat that ChatGPT poses.”

“From now until a major conference expected to be hosted by Google in May, teams within Google’s research, Trust and Safety, and other departments have been reassigned to help develop and release new A.I. prototypes and products.”

The likely point in future where Google describes its advancement in AI would be at its annual I/O where it shows off progress made on LaMDA, Google’s own AI chat bot.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai hinted the company has “a lot” planned in the space in 2023 but added that “This is an area where we need to be bold and responsible, so we have to balance that,” according to a recent CNBC report.

Earlier this year, Google suspended one of its engineers, Blake Lemoine, after he claimed the company’s ‘LaMDA’ chatbot system had achieved sentience. Read more about it here.

Image credit: Google

Source: The New York Times