Cloud Next 2024: Embracing the Next Wave of Generative AI

This week at Cloud Next, we're excited to showcase how our extensive experience and groundbreaking research in AI are empowering organizations globally with innovative solutions.

Google's Journey in the Cloud: Empowering Businesses with AI Innovation

Google's evolution into a cloud-based powerhouse has been marked by a commitment to share our tools, breakthroughs, and computing prowess to fuel business growth and transformation worldwide.

Our Cloud business has experienced remarkable growth, reaching a $36 billion annual revenue run rate in Q4, a fivefold increase over the past five years.

AI has been a key driver of this progress. Recognizing AI as a transformative technology, we've made substantial investments in AI infrastructure and models, positioning us at the forefront of the AI platform revolution. Today, more than 60% of funded generative AI startups and nearly 90% of gen AI unicorns are Google Cloud customers.

At Cloud Next, we're excited to unveil new initiatives stemming from decades of innovation and research. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian will provide a comprehensive overview of our latest announcements.

Here are some of the highlights we'll be sharing:

Opening New Horizons: Enhanced Accessibility to Top AI Models through Vertex AI

Introducing Gemini 1.5 Pro: Advancing AI Capabilities for Enterprises

In the past six months, we've introduced our most powerful AI models yet, including Gemini 1.5 Pro, which is now entering public preview for our Cloud customers and developers. Gemini 1.5 Pro delivers significantly enhanced performance, boasting breakthroughs in long context understanding. This advancement allows it to consistently process 1 million tokens of information, opening up new frontiers for enterprise AI applications.

When paired with Gemini's multimodal capabilities, which can handle audio, video, text, code, and more, the long context feature empowers enterprises to achieve feats previously unimaginable with AI. For instance, a gaming company could analyze a player's performance through video and provide personalized improvement tips. Similarly, an insurance company could leverage video, images, and text inputs to generate comprehensive incident reports, streamlining the claims process.

In addition to Gemini, we're expanding access to an updated version of our open model, Gemma, designed to assist customers with code generation and other coding tasks.

All these innovations are now accessible through Vertex AI, Google Cloud's platform for customizing and managing leading generative AI models. Currently, over 1 million developers leverage our generative AI tools across platforms like AI Studio and Vertex AI. Furthermore, Vertex AI now offers enhanced model grounding capabilities, allowing customers to connect model outputs with verifiable sources of information in two new ways. Firstly, through Google Search, which enriches responses with high-quality information for greater accuracy. Secondly, by integrating with enterprise applications such as Workday or Salesforce, as well as Google Cloud databases like BigQuery, customers can further augment and validate their AI models.

Unleashing Innovation: Harnessing the Power of Our AI Hypercomputer

Empowering Generative AI Breakthroughs with Advanced Infrastructure

The progress of generative AI hinges on robust underlying infrastructure. Our AI Hypercomputer integrates TPUs, GPUs, AI software, and more to deliver exceptional performance and cost efficiency for model training and deployment. Today, leading AI companies and Google Cloud customers like Anthropic, AI21 Labs, Contextual AI, Essential AI, and Mistral AI leverage our infrastructure for their AI initiatives.

We're thrilled to announce the general availability of TPU v5p, our latest and most potent AI accelerator designed for training and inference. With 4 times the compute power of its predecessor, TPU v5p sets a new standard for scalability and flexibility in AI acceleration.

Gemini for Cloud and cybersecurity

Enhancing AI Capabilities for Enhanced Productivity and Security

We are introducing new features aimed at providing AI-powered assistance to enhance customer productivity, coding efficiency, security threat detection, and more.

Today marks the launch of upgraded features for Gemini Code Assist, which now includes Gemini 1.5 Pro (in private preview). With an expanded context window, Gemini 1.5 Pro offers more accurate code suggestions and deeper insights, revolutionizing code generation and testing.

Furthermore, we are introducing AI-driven tools to empower organizations in threat detection, intelligence summarization, and response against security threats. Gemini Threat Intelligence, currently in preview, leverages natural language processing to provide comprehensive insights into threat actor behavior. The extended context window of Gemini enables the analysis of larger samples of potentially malicious code, yielding more accurate threat assessments.

Launching more AI-powered features in Google Workspace

Empowering Google Workspace with Enhanced Generative AI Features

Last year, we introduced generative AI capabilities to Google Workspace with "Help me write." Today, millions of individuals and businesses benefit from Gemini for Google Workspace features across Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and more.

Now, we're expanding Gemini for Google Workspace with additional enhancements across Gmail, Meet, and Chat. Additionally, we're introducing Google Vids, an all-in-one video creation app designed for work, joining the suite of productivity tools alongside Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Customer Innovation: Unveiling Creative Solutions

Exploring Customer Innovation Across Industries

We are witnessing remarkable customer momentum spanning various industries, from retail to transportation and beyond. Many customers are leveraging generative AI to develop agents capable of processing information across video, audio, and text formats. These agents are designed to assist with specific tasks such as customer service and creative design, continuously learning and improving over time.

Mercedes-Benz exemplifies this trend by integrating Google's AI into multiple facets of their operations, including smart sales assistants, call center enhancements for customer service, and website optimization. Looking ahead, we are excited about our collaboration with Mercedes-Benz to integrate Gemini models into their in-vehicle conversational systems.

Uber is another notable example, utilizing AI agents to enhance employee productivity and efficiency. For customer service representatives, Uber has introduced new tools that summarize user communications and provide contextual information from previous interactions, empowering frontline staff to offer more effective assistance.

Since 2018, our partnership with Palo Alto Networks has focused on tackling complex security challenges for our customers. We are thrilled to embark on the next phase of AI innovation together, leveraging our Gemini-powered capabilities alongside Palo Alto Networks' cybersecurity platforms to equip security teams with near real-time advantages against attackers.

What’s next for Google Cloud

Exploring Innovation Through Cloud Partnerships

These examples highlight how companies are collaborating with Google Cloud, and many more will showcase their experiences at Cloud Next. The emerging innovation and momentum are truly exciting, reflecting the deep partnerships Google Cloud is fostering.

Similar to how cloud computing revolutionized business operations a decade ago, AI is poised to unlock remarkable opportunities and drive progress once again. Google Cloud remains committed to empowering organizations worldwide to achieve transformative goals. We eagerly anticipate what the future holds in this dynamic landscape of technological evolution.