Welcome to our live coverage of Google Cloud Next 2024! We’re live in Las Vegas for a packed week of news and announcements from one of the world’s biggest players when it comes to cloud innovation.
Yesterday say an opening keynote from Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian that was packed full of new product and service announcements, with insight from major customers.
We’ll be keeping you updated with all the latest announcements here, so stay tuned for everything you need to know for Google Cloud Next 2024!
So what are we expecting to see from Google Cloud this week? In a word – AI.
The company has been bullish in its use of AI across the board, and has been ramping up Gemini and Vertex in many of its product lines.
Elsewhere, we’re probably set to see a host of new updates and upgrades for Google Workspace – again, most likely to be around AI, but with the scale of the office software suite, who knows?
We may also see some new hardware – with Nvidia recently announcing its latest flagship Blackwell chips, it’s very likely we’ll see something with Google announced here.
Good morning from a beautifully sunny Las Vegas (although our view of the US eclipse yesterday was…sub-par, it has to be said)
We’re getting ready to head over for the day one keynote, hosted by none other than Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian himself.
With a star-studded lineup of customers, partners and guests, the keynote should also include a whole host of news and announcements, so stay tuned for more soon!
We’re en route to the keynote! Let’s hope the Wi-Fi is ready…
We’re in and seated at the Michelob Ultra arena, nice and early for the keynote.
It’s already pretty packed out, with Google partners, executives, employees and many more all here already and ready for the keynote.
In case you’ve missed it, we’ve already had a few news pieces sneak out ahead of the keynote…
This includes the launch of Google Vids, the company’s latest additon to Google Workspace, allowing for companies to build and edit videos from scratch.
There’s also lots more AI coming to Google Meet and Chat, including a new “Take notes for me” function that will allow users to focus on their call.
And a load more AI security tools are coming to Google Workspace as the company looks to make the platform safer for everyone.
The lights go down (after a pretty funky light countdown), and after a video explaining what Google AI can do around the world, it’s keynote time!
Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud CEO, takes to the stage.
Google has made over a thousand product updates since the last Cloud Next, he says, claiming that this makes the company the fastest-growing cloud provider in the world.
Next is a video from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who extols the value of AI, and the work the cloud arm of Google is doing.
He gives a specific shoutout to Gemini, and the latest version of the AI model – Gemini 1.5 Pro, which offers more opportunities for enterprises everywhere.
“With these advances, enterprises can do things with AI that just weren’t possible before,” Pichai says.
After that little boost, Kurian returns.
He gives a shout-out to the customers using Google Cloud to build AI apps and offerings using a wide range of models and tools.
Kurian notes how Google Cloud is offering the latest hardware releases to help companies around the world provide a modern infrastructure that is ready for the next generation of cloud.
That extends to the data cloud, security cloud and collaboration cloud – which includes Google Workspace.
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg – there’s a whole lot more,” he says.
Kurian says the big announcements today are around generative AI. Customers are increasingly building AI models using all sorts of cloud services, Kurian notes, teeing us up for his first guest, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.
Solomon says the company is using AI across the business, from improving efficiency to boosting productivity – but there’s still a long way to go.
Now we have some news – Google’s new AI Hypercomputer, the bedrock of its AI platform, including Gemini models and Vertex AI
“We’re the only cloud to ffer widely used first-party and third-party models,” Kurian notes.
To talk us through the AI infrasturcture news, Kurian welcomes Amin Vandaht.
First big launch – the A3 Mega VMs, offering huge growth in productivity. There’s also support for Nvidia’s latest GB200 NVL72 powerhouse chips, as Google’s own TPU v5p, its msot powerful and scalabale TPU to date.
Google has huge plans to offer end-to-end infrastructure through its AI Hypercomputer platform, which provides everything from storage to hardware.
After rattling through a whole load of announcements without pausing for breath (we’ll try and catch up later) – we think there were a few more AI-focused announcements revealed.
We do pause though with the announcement of Google Axion – the company’s first chip for the data center. Built in assocation with Arm, it promises 60% better energy efficiency, and is already being deployed at scale.
Quick as a flash, we’re on to AI, specifically Gemini 1.5 Pro, which is now available in public preview.
Kurian runs through a number of possible use cases, from financial services to universities to start-ups looking for an easier way to code.
“With these additions, Google Cloud continues to be the only cloud provider to offer such services,” he adds.
These models can also be finely-tuned to however you need, and Google is now announcing Supervised Tuning for Gemini Models, to get the most out of these AI models.
Now it’s on to grounding results – which can now be done with Google Search, “perhaps the world’s most trusted source of factual information”, Kurian notes.
This will improve result quality, and significantly lower the chance of hallucinations, Kurian says.
The models can now be even more finely-tuned with new Prompt Management tools, including a nw side-by-side function to explain why some prompts do better than others, along with a new Rapid Evolution tool that can help rollouts quicker and easier.
Now it’s on to some wider use cases – starting with Customer Agents.
We’re hearing now from Ola Kallenus, the CEO of Mercedes-Benz, around how Google Cloud is helping it offer a high-end customer experience through AI, creating a more personalized experience.
This could even expand to automated driving soon, he hints.
Gemini Pro on Vertex AI is also being used on Samsung’s latest Galaxy 24 smartphones, Kurian reveals, as well as providing extra security, safety, privacy and data protection.
To help create the next generation of agents, a new Vertex AI Agent Builder offers a much simpler process to train, edit and launch AI-powered tools in the future, including controlling and grounding responses.
We’re now seeing a few demos of how this new customer agent platform can work, including how shoppers can use it to craft a specific request to track down a certain product.
Now we’re moving on the employee agents, which will help companies make sure their workers are collaborating together effectively.
To hear about one particular examples, we hear from Daria Khosrowsahi, CEO of Uber, on how his company is doing just that. He’s particularly keen to talk about how it is helping boost productivity and efficiency – and even employee retention, using Google Cloud’s AI.
Now a change – Aparna Pappu, chief of Google Workspace is here to talk about how the office software suite is changing.
Unsurprisingly, AI is front of mind, and she notes how “Help me write” suggestions are already proving a major success.
The next step – boosting Gemini even further.
A little slam against Zoom and Microsoft Teams, as Pappu says Google Meet is trouncing them in video and audio quality.
To bosot this further, a new AI Meetings and Messaging add-on looks to boost this even further.
There’s also a new AI Security add-on to boost privacy and protection, and a new Gemini in Google Chat tool to provide summaries.
We’re treated to a few in-depth demos showing how Gemini is set to play an even greater role in Google Workspace, including summarizing meeting notes from lengthy transcripts and checking whether proposals comply with compliance proposals.
Now, we’re moving on to how Vertex AI can help empower employee agents, including the use of custom models, multi-modal input support, grounding and extensions, and extra add-on frameworks.
Now, we’re moving on to Creative Agents, particularly in how creative and marketing teams are benefitting.
This extends from slides to image creation – but now, even further, with the launch of the latest addition to Workspace – Google Vids.
The new tool allows businesses to create professional-quality videos with a few simple prompts, with full editing and customization options to make sure they get exactly the video they want.
Pappu notes that the launch will help businesses of all levels embrace video, possibly for the first time – and shows us a demo where Gemini suggests storylines, styles, tone and more.
And because it’s part of Google Workspace, there’s full integration with Docs, Sheets and more, and boosted collaboration across your teams.
Next up, there’s a boost in image generation, with Imagen 2.0 now generally available in Vertex AI.
There’s also text-to-live image, making it easier to create generated AI images with just a few words.
Lastly, there’s digital watermarking for AI images created by Imagen 2.0, and new editing modes to make it easy to remove unwanted elements in an image, add more elements, and expand borders to create a wider view.
A demo of these tools show how a business can use the platform to brainstorm ideas before creating prototypes of various styles, themes and more, and building a narrative and standalone images for an advertising campaign.
Next up, we’re switching to data agents, and the role Google Cloud can play in boosting those. We hear from Walmart EVP Suresh Kumar about how it is using huge amounts of data with AI to create new insights and personalized experiences.
These agents are built to search through all your company’s data to draw out insights and trends like never before.
Google Cloud is adding BigQuery to its search qualities, including BigQuery Data Canvas and new vector indexing tools to make this even more thorough.
There’s also Gemini in Looker, available in preview, allowing you to “chat” with your business data, all giving you the chance to get further access and insights like never before.
Next, it’s on to coding – with code agents, as AI is set to bring big changes into how the field works.
Gemini Code Assist has already seen strong traction, and the company is now expanding this across Gitlab, Github, on-premise and off.
There’s some new additions – Gemini 1.5 Pro is coming to Code Assist, bringing a 1 million token window to coding, “revolutionizing” coding, the company says.
There’s also Gemini Cloud Assist, working across your app framework to get much smoother and easier rollouts and expansions for your business.
Finally, we’re moving on to security – with AI set to play a major role here as well.
Thomas Kurian is back, to talk about ensuring controls and boosting protection using generative AI.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a few more news announcements to come.
Gemini in Threat Intelligence will provide in-depth research and flagging threats before they affect your business, allowing for natural language prompts to spot issues.
Gemini in Security Operations will provide AI-assisted investigations, and Gemini in Security Command Center will help businesses react to attacks or threats before they do too much harm.
And with that final flourish, it’s time to wrap up.
“Our paltform offers choice at every layer,” Kurian notes, from hardware to AI models and so much more.
“We’re at a pivotal moment in our industry,” he adds, “we’re reinventing infrastructure to support a new age of AI”
“Together we’re building a new way to cloud.”
And that’s a wrap on the day one keynote! There’s much more to come here at Google Cloud Next, so stay tunedto TechRadar Pro for more news, announcements and other insight to come throughout the day.
Good morning and welcome to day two of Google Cloud Next!
After yesterday’s news extravaganza, we’re getting ready for another bumper day. This morning sees the developer-focused keynote, which should see a deeper dive into some of the products and services we saw yetserday.
But we’ve also got media sessions with Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, and Kristina Behr, VP of Product, Google Workspace Collaboration, so there’s plenty more to come today!