Google Next 2023 Wrap Up: Here’s What You Missed!

Events Google Google Cloud Wursta
Ashley Lewis

What. A. Week. Google Next 2023 wrapped up just over a week ago on August 31st and the learnings are endless. Not only did Google announce several enhancements to old offerings, they also provided some new offerings to incorporate within your Google ecosystem. Generative AI was especially emphasized. “We are in an entirely new era of digital transformation, fueled by gen AI,” said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian at Google Cloud Next 2023 on Tuesday. Let’s take a look at what was unveiled, as well as what Wursta’s experience was like during the conference.

Duet and Vertex AI

As we know, artificial intelligence has become the focus of the technology industry recently and Google didn’t hold back on showcasing their AI offerings. Google’s Duet AI and Vertex AI were announced earlier this year but have expanded in capabilities to feature better image and text generation, coding generation, and more. 

Vertex AI:

  • Multi-Turn Search And Search Summarization – multi-turn search provides the ability for users to ask follow-up questions without starting the interaction over. Another new feature is conversation and search summarization that enables crisp summaries for search results and chat conversations.
  • Google enhanced it’s Vertex AI foundation model PaLM 2 – PaLM 2 is Google’s new large language model (LLM) that has now been expanded to increase input token length and offer 38 new languages. They also expanded the context window to allow for processing of larger documents such as research papers.
  • Codey – Codey is Google’s Vertex AI coding assistant. Released earlier in the year, Google unveiled new features at Google Next that offer 25% quality improvement for code generation and code chat. 
  • New Models – Google added new models to Vertex AI Model Garden including Meta’s Llama 2 and Code Llama and Technology Innovation Institute’s Falcon LLM, and pre-announced Anthropic’s Claude 2.

Duet AI:

  • Duet AI is now available in several applications inside of Google Workspace and Google Cloud
    • Google Cloud (In Preview) – with new capabilities, and general availability coming later this year.
    • Big Query – Duet AI in BigQuery provides contextual assistance for writing SQL and Python to access and analyze user data, which can allow teams to focus more on logic and outcomes.
    • Looker (In Preview)
    • Cloud Spanner (In Preview) – to help with generating code to structure, modify, or query your data using natural language.
    • GKE (In Preview) – provides generative AI assistance specifically trained on GKE documentation to help platform teams cut down on time it takes to learn and operate Kubernetes. 
    • Mandiant Threat Intelligence (In Preview) 
    • Chronicle Security Operations (In Preview) – aids in threat detection, investigation, and response for cyber defenders
    • Security Command Center (In Preview) – offers near-instant analysis of security findings and possible attack paths.

Data Analytics:

  • New model inference in BigQuery lets you run model inferences across formats like TensorFlow, ONNX, and XGBoost, and new capabilities for real-time inference can identify patterns and automatically generate alerts. 
  • Now you can access thousands of datasets from hundreds of providers including Acxiom, Bloomberg, Equifax, Nielsen, and Zoominfo directly in BigQuery. 
  • Spark integration on Google Distributed Cloud extends the power of fast analytical query processings to on-premises to support data residency requirements. 
  • BigQuery Studio, in preview, is a single interface for data engineering, analytics, and predictive analysis to simplify end-to-end data workflows.

Collaboration Tech:

  • Google Chat will soon support up to 500,000 participants in a single space, to help build thriving communities, even in the largest organizations.
  • Google is enhancing smart reply in Gmail with Duet AI, allowing you to draft longer personalized replies with a single tap.
  • Duet AI in Google Meet can capture notes, action items, and video snippets in real time with the “take notes for me” feature, and send a recap to attendees after the meeting. It can even catch latecomers up with “summary so far,” or attend a meeting in your place with “attend for me.”
  • Duet AI for Google Workspace can create a whole new presentation in Slides, complete with text, charts, and images, based on your relevant content in Drive and Gmail.

To view the full list of updates announced during the conference, check out Google’s recap here.

Session Highlights:

If you missed Google Next, the good news is you can still catch up on all the great information provided by watching the recorded sessions in the Google Next session library. Here are two sessions in particular we think you will not want to miss.

GenAI for the Enterprise

This session covered why companies would want to utilize GenAI and if it’s just a fad vs a real solution. In today’s fast paced environment employees are bogged down by tasks and utilizing AI frees up time for them. By having a plan around AI you not only enhance the ability of a person to perform highly, you allow them to perform faster. Utilizing AI isn’t in place to replace people but to make them more efficient and more agile. 

Watch the Recording!

How CloudOn’s multicloud approach increased end-customer uptime

Our own Matt Wursta spoke alongside Google and our client CloudOn about how their multicloud strategy accelerated performance for CloudOn’s resource-strapped clients – providing higher uptimes and a 138% increase in download speed for client applications thanks to Google Cloud’s Virtual Private Cloud architecture. 

Watch the Recording!

Overall Conference Takeaways

It was great to be back in person for Google Next and our team thoroughly enjoyed our time at the conference helping attendees Humanize their IT! We talked to several Google Cloud users to help them troubleshoot issues and also discussed how a human centric approach to technology can help maximize their results. It was also exciting to see so many students in attendance getting ready to make their impact on the tech community. Having the “puppy park” right by our booth helped us recharge by giving us a dose of cuteness when needed.

In addition to our activities at the conference we also hosted a great Speakeasy Party at the Pawn Shop near the Moscone Center. If you were able to attend, we had SO much fun and sincerely thank you for hanging out with our team.

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