Generative AI tools have rapidly become one of the most vital tools for companies of all sizes and across all industries, but without the right support and investment from those firms driving the innovation, how useful can it really be?
Given its size and influence, Google Cloud has long been at the forefront of the technological curve, and when it comes to the so-called “AI revolution”, it is unsurprisingly in a great position to maximize the potential of generative AI.
The company’s recent Google Cloud Next event in London saw the company look to highlight just how central a role it can play, but having talked the AI talk, can it now walk the AI walk?
"The AI company"
”Google has always been known as the AI company…(but) this generative AI generation is really giving us the opportunity to shine,” Phil Moyer, Google Cloud’s VP Global AI & Business Solutions told us at Google Cloud Next.
Moyer had earlier spoken as part of the event’s keynote speech, highlighting the “incredible momentum” of Google’s Vertex AI platform, and noting that there had been an “explosion” in projects and products looking to use the technology.
He added Google had effectively been an “AI company” since CEO Sundar Pichai declared this ambition for the company back in 2016, with the move effectively giving it a head start of over 10 years over the competition.
"We are unique,” he notes, “in providing cloud but also first-party models, open source models, and third-party models,” adding that Google Cloud offers over a hundred models that power over 70% of AI unicorns around today.
Moyer was keen to highlight the potential impact of Cross-Cloud Interconnect, announced in May 2023, which allows users to connect any public cloud with Google Cloud, greatly boosting interoperability, being able to migrate workloads from one cloud to another, whilst also simplifying SaaS networking in a multicloud environment.
“The fact that we’re hosting all of these models and providing all these tools - first-party tools, our tools - tools to make sure that what you’re doing is accurate and you can build quickly - I would probably say that we have the widest suite of offerings of any of the cloud vendors.”
Looking to the future, Moyer highlighted the potential of collaboration and expansion, in many cases given how vast the interest in generative AI is right now.
"I have been really excited and amazed to see how universal the interest in gen AI is, around the world,” he notes, “with every organization, the interest is universal, it’s sparked the imagination of every business leader.
“Sometimes the expectations are overblown, and we have to dial back what these expectations are - sometimes people can be too aggressive about the problems they tackle, but generally…the fear of missing out is about, ‘am I thinking broadly enough about the use of AI in every business function”
These expectations and hopes could be key to making the most out of generative AI, however, with Moyer concluding by once again emphasising how crucial Google’s own work can be in making the technology better for all.
“Our DNA and our mission is to organize the world's information and make it useful to everyone - and AI is at the centre of that. When you have information and data, in some cases doubling or tripling every single year, it’s becoming increasingly hard and becoming increasingly difficult for organizations and individuals to be able to keep up with that information.”
"You’ll see us make it safer, easier and more cost-effective…that next three to five years is going to be a great maturation, and a great amount of innovation.”
