Google is banking on the gradual integration of artificial intelligence into all its products

From our correspondent in California,

When OpenAI unveiled the power of ChatGPT, and Microsoft felt the tide of signing a massive partnership to catapult its Bing search engine into a new era, Google declared an internal “code red.” On Wednesday, on the occasion of its conference for Google I/O developers, organized in Mountain View, we discovered the first concrete results of this mobilization. Launch of its Bard chatbot in 180 countries, emails written by the machine, synthetic images… Google is betting on artificial intelligence, while promising to use this technology “responsibly”. Particularly for research, which the giant wants to avoid upsetting too much.

The Bard chatbot accessible in 180 countries

The waiting list is over. Two months after its hasty response to ChatGPT, Google is launching its smart chatbot Bard in 180 countries. For now, it’s only in English, Japanese and Korean, but Google promises support for 40 languages, including French, for “soon”.

Bard leverages the power of PaLM 2, Google’s latest LLM (large language model), and can enable people without technical knowledge to create computer programs by describing the desired output, such as “coding in Python the movements of chess pieces”. Google has announced partnerships, including with Adobe, to generate images with Bard, for example to create a birthday invitation for a little girl who loves unicorns.

Gmail able to write emails on its own

Gmail already suggested short replies. With “Help me write” (Help me to write), the software becomes a real secretary. Need to write an email to request a refund? He takes care not only of the text, but will look for all the factual elements in our correspondence. If the result is too polished, he can be asked to change the tone.

Clearly identified synthetic images

We are starting to see more realistic synthetic images, which represents a headache for misinformation. In its Principles of Accountability, Google promised to clearly identify the images generated by its AI. Images, but also videos, like its universal translator, which is able to perform near real-time dubbing, with mouth movements modified to match the new syllables.

A dose of AI in search results

It is finally on the heart of its profession – and its business – that Google is the most timorous. The AI ​​lands in its search engine, but in beta, and only in the United States, by registering in Search Labs. This “Search generative experience” will be launched in a few weeks.

On the program, a response digested by the machine, after having passed the Web to the grinder, which is displayed above the classic blue search results. Google has been careful to avoid giving the AI ​​a personality, which remains very factual and hopefully avoids hallucinating or making up quotes.

It’s experimental for now, but the Mountain View company has already included ads, such as sponsored results for “a bike suitable for an 8 km hilly journey”. Google’s biggest challenge is not to prevent an uprising of the machines but to prevent a competitor, or the AI, from killing its golden hen.

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