Google has taken a daring step to change the way we are related to technology, by revealing Project Astra, a pioneering chatbot technology that will make the distinction between virtual and physical worlds less clear. Besides this, the tech giant revealed the launch of AI-created summaries in its leading search product which is a step towards bringing the advanced artificial intelligence to all the U. S. users.
The announcements were made at Google’s annual developers conference, where top executives held the stage to demonstrate the company’s achievements in the intense AI industry. Moreover, Google is facing rivals such as Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and the richly funded startups, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity, all of which are pushing the boundaries of AI, and so Google is trying to keep its leading position by integrating artificial intelligence into its product catalogue.
Project Astra, the “universal AI agent” that is the brainchild of Demis Hassabis, the head of Google’s DeepMind AI unit, is a project that can understand the context of a user’s environment. In an interesting video demonstration, Google showed that users can take a picture of a nearby object with their phone camera and ask Astra the relevant questions like “What neighborhood am I in?” or “Where did I leave my glasses?” This technology, which works in the context of the environment, is set to change the way we interact with our devices and make the virtual and physical world one.
Although Project Astra is going to be incorporated into the Gemini app soon this year, Google’s AI ambitions are much bigger than chatbots. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, declared that the company’s AI capabilities, controlled by the Gemini technology, are now part of all of Google’s main products that have over 2 billion users each, like YouTube and Search.
Although Project Astra is supposed to be added to the Gemini app this year, the AI dreams of Google are much wider than the chatbots. Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s CEO, declared that the company’s AI technologies, which are based on the Gemini technology, are now integrated into all of Google’s key products, such as YouTube and Search that have over 2 billion users each.
It has been recently announced that Google will upload AI-created overviews to all U.S. users of its main search product this week. These overviews, which have already answered billions of queries using Gemini technology, are designed to give the users comprehensive and intelligent answers to their queries.
“We are encouraged not only to see an increase in search usage, but also in customer satisfaction,” Pichai stated, underscoring the positive impact of AI on the search experience.
In the next few weeks Google is going to take its AI-powered search a notch higher by making it go through multi-step reasoning. This advanced feature will be able to solve long, multi-part questions, for instance, finding the best-rated yoga studios in Los Angeles, calculating the walking distance from each and giving the cost per class, all from a single search query.
“Google search is generative AI at the scale of human curiosity,” Pichai proclaimed, highlighting the company’s ambition to harness the power of AI to meet the ever-evolving needs of its users.
Besides Project Astra and AI-based search, Google introduced several AI-related creations, such as the sixth generation of Trillium GPUs, a 4. 7x enhancement in the compute performance from the previous version and Veo, a generative video model which is now available for use in VideoFX, and the select features are to be made available to the developers soon.
The race to become the leader in the AI world is on and with the launch of Project Astra and the deployment of the AI-generated search overviews, Google has shown its dedication to the development of the limits of what is possible with Artificial Intelligence. Through the smooth incorporation of AI into its main products and services, Google is not only improving the user experience but also creating a future where technology will become an inherent part of our everyday life.