New products and updates announced at Google Cloud Next 2024

At Google Cloud Next 2024, they announced updates to all aspects of the company's work, including artificial intelligence infrastructure, model and platform, workspace, cybersecurity tools and other leading cloud technologies. The conference took place from April 9 to April 11, 2024 in Las Vegas, USA.

Google Videos

Aparna Pappu, vice president and general manager of Google Workspace, announced a new AI video creation tool called Google Vids. It will become part of Google Workspace.

Google Vids allows you to create videos for product presentations, educational content, or holiday greetings for your team. The tool is currently in limited testing.

Google Gemini Code Assist

Google has introduced new Code Assist, an artificial intelligence-powered tool for code completion and assistance in writing code. Previously, the company offered a similar service under the Duet AI brand.

Google Gemini Code Assist will be available through plugins for popular editors such as VS Code and JetBrains, and will compete with GitHub's Copilot Enterprise. This feature is currently in preview.

AI features in Google Workspace

The conference announced new AI features in Google Workspace: voice prompts to launch the Help Me Write feature in Gmail, a custom alert when a specific field is changed, and a set of templates for Google Sheets.

In addition, Google announced the release of two paid user packages:

• an AI meetings and messaging add-on that takes notes, provides meeting summaries, and translates content into 69 languages;
• An AI security suite that helps administrators control Google Workspace content.

Imagen 2

In February, Google introduced an image generator built into Gemini. After generation errors, Google withdrew Imagen, promising to improve it and eventually republish it.

Imagen 2 was announced at Cloud Next. In addition to generation, it can display text, emblems and logos in multiple languages, optionally overlaying these elements on existing images such as business cards, clothing and products. Additionally, Imagen 2 can create short four-second videos from text prompts, similar to those from Runway, Pika and Reverent Labs.

Vertex AI Agent Builder

Google has introduced Vertex AI Agent Builder, a new tool aimed at helping create artificial intelligence agents. The product is based on Google Vertex AI Search and Conversation. It is also built on top of the latest Gemini language models and relies on both the RAG API and vector search.

Gemini for Databases

Google is introducing a set of developer-focused AI tools into its databases. One of Gemini's database components is Database Studio, an editor for Structured Query Language (SQL), a language used for storing and processing data.

The new Google Database Center, another component of Gemini, allows users to interact with natural language databases and manage data with tools to evaluate its availability, security, and privacy.

Gemini in Threat Intelligence

Google announced Gemini in Threat Intelligence, a new component powered by Gemini.

In Mandiant, it can analyze large chunks of potentially malicious code and allows users to search for current threats or signs of compromise, as well as aggregate open source intelligence reports from around the internet.

In Security Command Center, Google's enterprise cybersecurity and risk management suite, a new feature managed by Gemini allows security teams to search for threats in natural language, providing at-a-glance information about misconfigurations, vulnerabilities and possible attack paths.

Additionally, Gemini can now assist with cybersecurity investigations at Chronicle, Google's cybersecurity telemetry offering for cloud customers.

Chrome Enterprise Premium

Google has expanded its Chrome Enterprise product suite with the launch of Chrome Enterprise Premium.

With Chrome Enterprise, IT departments gain control over employees' browser settings, the extensions they install, and the web applications they use. The innovation expands the security capabilities of the existing service, based on the understanding that browsers are now the endpoints where much of the important work is done internally.

Gemini 1.5 Pro

At the conference, the company announced that Google Gemini Pro 1.5 is being released to the public through Vertex AI. The main feature of the model is the volume of context: from 128 thousand to 1 million tokens.

Since Gemini 1.5 Pro is multilingual and multimodal in the sense that it can understand images, video and audio, the model can also analyze and compare content in media such as TV shows, movies, radio shows, conference call recordings and more, in different languages.