Google’s I/O event is less than two days away, and a new CNBC report may have revealed some of the most important AI-focused updates to be announced at the show.
A big component will be a new major language model (LLM), PaLM 2, which CNBC describes as a general-purpose LLM that is Google’s “most recent and advanced.” The LLM has apparently “run a wide variety of coding and math tests, as well as creative writing tests and analysis,” according to CNBC, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google showcase some of those capabilities on stage. (The first PaLM was announced in April 2022, months before the recent AI boom fueled by applications like ChatGPT.)
CNBC reports that Google will also announce “generative experiences” for search and Bard, the AI-powered chatbot it launched as an experiment in March, including expanding Bard to Japanese and Korean languages. At the moment, Bard is only available in the US and UK.
Google will also unveil more Workspace-focused AI tools, including “templates generation in Sheets and image generation in its Slides and Meet products,” says CNBC. The company announced AI features for Gmail and Docs in March, but launched them with “trusted testers” first, so we’ll have to wait and see whether these new features remain limited or become more widely available.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But it’s not too surprising that the company could be making a big AI boom at Google I/O. With the emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s own aggressive AI efforts, Google has recently put AI at the center of almost everything it does and has even made massive organizational shifts to further boost its AI work.