Google’s Cloud Next 2024 event was all about artificial intelligence (AI). From video products to AI-powered chatbots to DevOps and security, the central focus of the event was AI and here are the top highlights of the launches made:
Gemini Code Assist
A competition to GitHub’s Copilot, Gemini Code Assist is an enterprise-focused AI code completion and assistance tool.
Google Cloud demoed Code Assist at its 30,000-attendee conference in Las Vegas. It will be available through plug-ins for popular editors like VS Code and JetBrains. The Code Assist is supported by the Gemini 1.5 Pro, which has over 1 million token context windows. This allows Google’s tool to pull in more context than competitors. Brad Calder, Google’s VP and GM for the cloud platform and technical infrastructure, said upgrading the one million token context window is the largest in the industry.
He said it allows customers to perform large-scale changes across the entire code base, enabling AI-assisted code transformations. This was not possible before.
Google Vids
Google also announced the launch of Google Vids, a new AI-fueled video creation tool and the latest addition to the Google Workspace. Users can make videos alongside other Workspace tools like docs and sheets, bringing writing and production under one umbrella. It also allows users to collaborate with colleagues in real-time.
The Google Workspace
The biggest shift was the announcement of a slew of new features to the Google Workspace. Some of these include voice prompts to kick off the AI-based ‘help me write’ feature in Gmail while on the go. Another feature of Gmail includes a way to turn rough email drafts into more polished emails instantly.
On Sheets, you have customisable alerts when a certain field changes and a new set of templates to make starting new spreadsheets easier. And for docs, there are support tabs. According to the company, this is good because you can “organise information in a single document instead of linking to multiple documents or searching through Drive.”
Google also wants to monetise two new AI features for the Google Workspace productivity suite. This would be approximately $10 per month per user add-on package. With this, new AI meetings and messaging add-ons will take notes, provide meeting summaries and translate content in over 69 languages.
An AI security package also helps admins secure their Google Workspaces.
