Google Search Reloaded ???

This year's Google I/O felt markedly different . Except for Google Search—which OpenAI kept on hold—each product announcement from the tech giant seemed to present an alternative to OpenAI's offerings. This included their latest text-to-video model Veo (Sora), Gemini 1.5 Flash (GPT-4o), and AI Teammates (GPT-4o desktop app), among others.

“Thanks to OpenAI for forcing Google to up its game,” said Pedro Domingos , a professor of computer science at UW and author of 'The Master Algorithm' and '2040’.?

Reimagining Google Search in the era of Gemini?

While OpenAI shied away from releasing a ‘Google Search Alternative’ at Spring Update , Google didn’t miss the opportunity to reinvent itself and change the search experience in ‘the era of Gemini’.?

Google chief Sundar Pichai seems to care less about the noise outside, as he recently said, ‘Google is dancing to its own music ’, in response to Microsoft chief’s statement about making Google ‘dance’. “I’ve always been very clear. I think we have a clear sense of what we need to do,” he said.

In order to tackle the likes of Perplexity AI and OpenAI, the search giant introduced ‘AI Overviews’ at Google I/O 2024. This feature generates summaries for user queries.

“Sometimes you want a quick answer, but you don’t have time to piece together all the information you need. Search will do the work for you with AI Overviews,” said Liz Reid , VP of Google Search.

Powered by the Gemini model customised for Google Search, it combines Gemini’s advanced capabilities — including multi-step reasoning, planning, and multimodality — with best-in-class Search systems.

“Now, with generative AI, Search can do more than you ever imagined. So you can ask whatever’s on your mind or whatever you need to get done — from researching to planning to brainstorming — and Google will take care of the legwork,” said Reid.?

What sets Google Search apart from others??

“First, our real-time information includes over a trillion facts about people, places, and things. Second, our unparalleled ranking and quality systems have been trusted for decades to get you the very best of the web. And third, the power of Gemini, which unlocks new agentic capabilities, right in Search,” said Reid.?

At Google I/O, the tech giant said it will also provide an AI-organised Search Page based on user queries.?

Meanwhile, Google is also experimenting with the search experience on Android. Circle to Search enables users to select text, images, or videos on their screen through various gestures such as circling, highlighting, scribbling, or tapping to get relevant information.

Also, this is the first time that a search engine can search through videos online and suggest, recommend, and propose. This, perhaps, will be one of Google's biggest moats, as video search saves you the time and effort of finding the right words to describe an issue.?

To sustain and compete with Google in the search engine space , one needs to offer more than just a good product. Snowflake chief Sridhar Ramaswamy , who attempted to build a Google alternative called Neeva, said that his company was not on the path to a sustainable valuation despite having a better product than Google.

Last year, Snowflake acquired Neeva, which turned out to be one of its best decisions. Ramaswamy founded Neeva, an ad-free, privacy-focused search engine, alongside another ex-Google executive, Vivek Raghunathan , in 2020.?

Read how Snowflake's acquisition of Neeva is starting to pay off here .

The beginning of autonomous AI agents?

At Google I/O , the tech giant unveiled Project Astra , a first-of-its-kind initiative to develop universal AI agents capable of perceiving, reasoning, and conversing in real-time.

The release comes just a day after OpenAI unveiled GPT-4o , which won hearts with its ‘omni’ capabilities across text, vision, and audio. OpenAI’s demos , which included a real-time translator , a coding assistant, an AI tutor , a friendly companion , a poet, and a singer , soon became the talk of the town .?

However, OpenAI’s GPT-4o agentic capabilities, in particular, have caught everyone’s attention, with some even calling it ‘the biggest part of the update’ and ‘a step closer to autonomous agents’.?

The GPT-4o desktop app can read your screen in real time and interact with your OS, revolutionising how people work. The app allows for voice conversations, screenshot discussions, and instant access to ChatGPT. It’s like having an AI teammate on your device who can help you with whatever you’re working on.

Read the full story here.?

Chatbot with Benefits?

Watch our latest video, where we discuss OpenAI's decision to provide free access to its advanced AI model, GPT-4o.?

Bodhi Computing to Make Chips for Krutrim AI Cloud

Bhavish Aggarwal, the CEO of Ola, is all over the place. The company’s acquisition of Bodhi Computing last year highlights its strategic shift towards designing in-house RISC-V chips to support its growing AI and cloud services.

This initiative resembles a marketplace concept akin to the one being developed by Tata Communications . While Tata is building its AI Cloud with NVIDIA, Aggarwal is batting for Make in India. He wants to design and build the chips that power his AI cloud locally. Check out the full story here. ?

INDIA

• At the AWS Summit Bengaluru, the company announced that Amazon Bedrock, its fully managed generative AI service, is now generally available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region.
• A new study by Tata Consultancy Services reveals that 65% of senior executives say their competitive advantage will still come from humans — with their creativity, intuition, and strategic thinking unleashed by AI’s augment and assist capabilities.
• BharatGPT is back with its dedication to building language models for India. Click here to check it out.?
• At Google I/O, India’s Project Navarasa took centre stage, highlighting the use of Gemma, making it accessible for 15 Indic languages.?

AI Conclave Wonders

Rakuten India, in partnership with AIM, is hosting the fourth edition of the Rakuten Product Conference (RPC ) ‘24, themed ‘Innovation Reimagined: Enterprise SaaS & AI’, as a virtual event on May 21-22, focusing on Enterprise SaaS and AI for data scientists and innovators globally. Click here to join. >>?