Google recently concluded its annual developer conference Google I/O 2024 where it announced a plethora of new updates and products. As expected, the technology giant focused majorly on artificial intelligence and unveiled several upgrades to its AI capabilities. Some of the key highlights from the two day event included new Android and Wear OS versions, next-gen TPU chips and enhancements to models like Gemini and Imagen.
At the keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai talked about the company’s vision of applying AI everywhere. He said Google I/O 2024 aims to bring powerful machine learning to every user. New features for Photos, Maps and Search that leverage generative AI models were announced. The company also shared plans to introduce AI-assisted content directly into the search results page and Maps platform for richer experiences.
Major AI Advancements
Google made significant progress with its generative models. Gemini received several upgrades including the ability to analyze hours of videos. A new version called Gemini Live was previewed for more natural conversations. Imagen saw an improvement from version 2 to 3 with better image generations. Gemma is now available with 27 billion parameters. Google I/O 2024 also saw the introduction of a new video generation model called Veo.
Apart from AI, Google announced new hardware in the form of Pixel 8a and the next gen of its AI chip Tensor Processing Unit. Other key launches were Project IDX IDE, Firebase Genkit for building AI apps and integration of Gemini capabilities on Maps, Gmail and Android. Overall, Google I/O 2024 highlighted the company’s focus on infusing machine learning everywhere.