Google's Latest Venture into Generative AI: Highlights from I/O 2024

"Sociable" is a new update on key social media changes and trends by industry pro Andrew Hutchinson from Social Media Today.

Google is heavily investing in AI to stay ahead in search and establish itself as a top player in the broader generative AI field.

Google revealed a variety of new AI features at its I/O conference today. The focus this time is on the company's upcoming AI projects, such as conversational Search, enhanced image and video creation, personalized chatbots, and more. Additionally, Google made some other announcements at the conference.

The highlight of the event was the unveiling of Google's advanced generative AI search technology.

As you can see in this example, Google’s bringing a ChatGPT like response generator to Search, which will provide complete overviews to answer your queries in-stream.

Google's new generative responses may not bode well for those who rely on Google for website traffic. Users can now get information directly from Google without visiting your site. Despite this change, Google will still display regular Search results below these responses. There are concerns that AI may change the way we use Search.

As for SEO implications, it's uncertain what the future holds. Experts suggest including more answers to common questions to attract users to your site. Companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are working on ways to add links to these responses for more context and to minimize disruptions. However, it's evident that changes are on the horizon.

Google’s AI Overviews will start rolling out to all users in the U.S. today. It will take some time to measure the impact of this big shift. More countries will be included soon, so get ready for a bumpy ride.

In addition to text-based search, Google’s also adding the ability to ask questions with video as well.

The capacity to search with video cues will offer more opportunities to discover answers. This feature will first be available to Search Labs users in English in the U.S., and will eventually be rolled out to additional regions.

Google has introduced new, upgraded generative AI options for creating images and videos. Imagen 3 helps generate images, while Veo can create video clips based on text prompts.

Veo can create high-quality videos with 1080p resolution in various cinematic and visual styles. Google mentions that Veo can also produce videos longer than a minute, allowing users to make extended clips based on their prompts. However, it seems like the length might not be significantly longer at this point.

Veo utilizes advanced natural language and visual semantics to produce videos that closely reflect a user's creative vision. It accurately captures the tone of a prompt and renders details in longer prompts. The model offers a high level of creative control and understands cinematic terms such as "timelapse" or "aerial shots of a landscape". The resulting footage is consistent and coherent, ensuring realistic movement of people, animals, and objects throughout the shots.

Imagen 3, on the other hand, is capable of generating more detailed and complex images with significantly fewer distracting visual artifacts compared to our previous models.

Both Veo and Google are introducing new options to enhance your creative process. Veo, in particular, has shown significant potential in various ways. Google is also launching the LearnLM initiative, which will utilize generative AI to develop personalized educational models on any subject. Additionally, Google is collaborating with universities to improve education through their generative AI tools.

It’s also adding new processes within Search that will make it easier to get explainers on different elements.

While it’s also developed a new, customizable AI chatbot tool, which will enable users to create their own bots, which Google’s calling “Gems”.

Well, they’re not completely unique bots since they use the same systems. However, you can customize the "personalities" of certain bots and processes, training them to exhibit specific behaviors and responses that suit your preferences.

Google is enhancing its AI search feature in Google Photos, enabling users to organize their images more efficiently based on advanced criteria (e.g. "Show me the best photo from each national park I’ve visited."). Additionally, Google is introducing new developer tools and opportunities for third parties to collaborate with its AI models.

Google also showcased their own AI-powered glasses, new workplace tools, music generation experiments, updates for Pixel phones, and more at the event.

AI remains the primary focus for Google going forward, especially with OpenAI introducing GPT4o this week, intensifying the competition in the AI field.

Exciting updates are on the way for Search, along with additional creation tools that will lead to a rise in the amount of content available online. Are these changes positive? We will soon see for ourselves.

Editor's P/S:

The article by Andrew Hutchinson provides a comprehensive overview of the latest updates and trends in social media. Google's significant investment in AI, particularly its conversational Search and generative AI image and video creation tools, is a noteworthy development. While these advancements offer exciting possibilities for users, they also raise concerns about the potential impact