Top 6 Artificial Intelligence announcements from Google I/O 2018

Overview

• Google announced new features and updates to Gmail, Google Photos, Google Maps etc. at it’s annual I/O conference
• Google Duplex and Google  Lens, two amazing services, were debuted at the event
• Below are the top 6 amazing AI services announced at the conference

Introduction

Google is one of the leaders in the Artificial Intelligence field and it has cemented it’s place at the top of ladder with it’s mind blowing products at the recently held annual I/O conference. New products like Google Duplex and Google Lens was showcased which left the audience gaping with awe. From updates in Google Maps to improvements for Android, Google has made every effort to make the user experience better for it’s existing line of products as well.

In the article, we have covered the top 6 announcements from the conference.

Smart compose for Gmail

Google’s smart reply has made answering emails extremely convenient. The team has added an extension to this amazing feature. Google’s G Suite team introduced Smart compose, a new feature powered by AI, which can auto-complete your sentences! As you  are typing, the tool can make suggestions for the rest of the sentence. All you need to do is press the tab button and it will complete the sentences (and the entire email) for you. Awesome!

ML Kit

Google launched ML Kit, which is a software development kit for app developers on iOS and Android. ML Kit can help developers add artificial intelligence-powered features to their mobile apps, irrespective of the OS. It also allows them to integrate a number of pre-built Google-provided machine learning models into their apps. The models support text recognition, face detection, barcode scanning, image labeling and landmark recognition.

Google Duplex

Google Duplex can conduct natural conversations and perform practical and realistic tasks over the phone! At Google I/O 2018, the team presented a demo of the AI making a call to a real hair salon and having a remarkably human-like conversation to book an appointment. This was one of the most fascinating announcements and we have covered it here. Check out the below video to see the AI in action:

Suggested Actions for photos

The team launched a new feature for Google Photos, called Suggested Actions. This includes AI-driven suggestions in Google Photos which offer you features like brighten, colorize, fix, or share your photos, based on what Google Photos recognizes. For instance, it can spot friends in your photos and lets you to share these photos with them through a one-click option.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahRWYZO9Szo

Updates to Google Maps

Google Maps has been updated to provide an even better and intuitive experience to the users. It can alert you with interesting updates near your area, like a festival or a restaurant shutting down, give you a ‘foodie list’ , or generate a list of popular brunch spots. Not only this, with the help of your phone camera, Google Maps can help you navigate around town, using Street View. The updated Google Maps will be out later this year and will be available for both iOS and Android. Check out the new features in the below video:

Google Lens

Google Lens has integrated AI to give users a big picture about their environments. It will also provide contextual suggestions for objects in their surrounding environment. For example, scanning a restaurant can show you the menu, pricing, reservations, and timings. It can also help you copy and save text from a book to your phones.

Another very interesting feature introduced in Google Lens is Style Match. It has been built using object-recognition and machine-learning techniques. Once you point your phone’s camera at an outfit, or accessories, or furniture, the technology will help you buy that item online, and even show similar styles you might like.

Our take on this

The Google team has announced some breathtaking updates and we are eagerly waiting for these to be unveiled to the public. They are expected to be out in the next few months. The features offered by Google Lens are beyond imagination. Personally I am really excited to try the new features on Google Maps as well. In the case of Google Duplex, they have also listed down the technology used – at the core is a recurrent neural network.

Also, Google has revamped it’s old Google Research division as Google AI which shows their focus on developing AI products in the future. All Google Research projects and studies on artificial intelligence and machine learning will now be posted here. I encourage you to go through their posts as they have listed down

What app or service are you most looking forward to using? Get involved in the discussion and let us know in the comments section below!

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Aishwarya Singh

An avid reader and blogger who loves exploring the endless world of data science and artificial intelligence. Fascinated by the limitless applications of ML and AI; eager to learn and discover the depths of data science.