Google CEO’s 8 Boldest AI Remarks On Cloud, Gemini And Security

Here are Sundar Pichai’s biggest AI statements on Google Cloud sales, project Gemini AI, Mandiant, Vertex AI growth and more during Google’s third-quarter 2023 earnings this week.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai made many bullish remarks during Google’s third-quarter 2023 earnings call on AI momentum around Vertex AI customer growth, injecting generative AI into its cybersecurity products, Google’s upcoming Gemini AI model and Google Cloud momentum.

“Customers are choosing Google Cloud because we are the only large cloud provider with a unified platform to analyze structured and unstructured data,” said Pichai during Google’s third-quarter 2023 earnings report with analysts this week.

In 2023, Pichai said Google is driving significant efficiencies, “both in our models, in training costs and serving costs” and the company’s ability to create successful AI use cases for customers.

“We’ll do everything that is needed to make sure we have the leading AI models and infrastructure in the world—bar none,” said Google’s CEO. “And we will continue driving efficiencies from there.”

Google Cloud Third-Quarter 2023 Earnings Results

For Google’s third-quarter 2023, the Mountain View, Calif.-based technology giant generated $76.7 billion in sales, up 11 percent year over year.

The company’s cloud business, Google Cloud, generated $8.41 billion in total revenue, representing an increase of 22 percent compared with $6.87 billion in third-quarter 2022.

For the third quarter in a row, Google Cloud reported positive operating income. The company’s operating income was $266 million, up from a loss of $440 million year over year. This means Google Cloud improved its operating income by over $700 million.

“We continue to invest aggressively [in Google Cloud] given the significant potential we see while remaining focused on profitable growth,” said Ruth Porat, Google’s president, chief investment officer and CFO, during the earnings call. “In terms of expenses and profitability, we’re pleased with our operating performance. As we have repeatedly stressed, we remain focused on durably re-engineering our cost base to create investment capacity to support our growth priorities, most important of which is with AI.”

CRN breaks down the eight boldest AI remarks from Pichai on Google’s next-generation Gemini AI large language model (LLM) model, injecting GenAI into Mandiant Threat Intelligence and other security products, Vertex AI, Duet AI and more.

Gemini AI Models ‘Launching Throughout 2024’ Via Vertex AI

On Gemini, I’m very excited at the progress there and as we’re working through getting the model ready. More importantly, we are just really laying the foundation of what I think of as the next-generation series of models we’ll be launching throughout 2024. The pace of innovation is extraordinarily impressive to see.

We are creating it from the ground up to be a multimodal, highly efficient tool and API integrations and, more importantly, laying the platform to enable future innovations as well.

We are developing Gemini in a way that it is going to be available at various sizes and capabilities, and we’ll be using it immediately across all our products internally as well as bringing it out to both developers and cloud customers through Vertex [AI].

So I view it as a journey and each generation is going to be better than the other, and we are definitely investing. The early results are very promising.

Vertex AI Projects Grow 7X; Google Provides ‘The Widest Choice Of Accelerator Options’ For AI

We continue to provide the widest choice of accelerator options.

Our A3 VMs powered by Nvidia’s H100 GPU are generally available, and we are winning customers with Cloud TPU v5e, our most cost-efficient and versatile accelerator to date.

On top of our infrastructure, our Vertex AI platform helps customers build, deploy and scale AI-powered applications. We offer more than 100 models, including popular third-party and open-source models, as well as tools to quickly build, search, and conversational use cases.

From Q2 to Q3, the number of active Generative AI projects on Vertex AI grew by 7X, including Highmark Health, which is creating more personalized member materials.

Integration Of Duet AI ‘Across Our Cybersecurity Portfolio’

We integrated Duet AI across our cybersecurity portfolio to differentiate in the marketplace, providing generative AI-powered assistance in Mandiant Threat Intelligence, Chronicle Security Operations and Security Command Center.

This reduces the time security teams spend writing, running and refining searches by seven times.

We are the only leading security provider that combines frontline intelligence and expertise, a modern security operations platform and a trusted cloud foundation—all infused with Generative AI—helping protect customers and partners like BT, Jack Henry & Associates and CoverMyMeds.

‘Thousands Of Customers And Partners’ Using Google Cloud To ‘Capture The Potential Of AI’

We are enabling developers, businesses and other organizations to build their own transformative products and services. For example, thousands of customers and partners are already using Google Cloud to capture the potential of AI.

Today, more than 60 percent of the world’s 1,000 largest companies are Google Cloud customers.

We offer advanced AI-optimized infrastructure to train and serve models at scale. And today, more than half of all funded Generative AI startups are Google Cloud customers. This includes AI21 Labs, Contextual, Elemental Cognition, Rytr and more.

Google Cloud saw continued growth with Q3 revenue of $8.41 billion, up 22 percent. … Overall, we definitely started seeing customers looking to optimize spend. We leaned into it to help customers, given some of the challenges they were facing. So that was a factor [in lower sales growth percentage compared with prior quarters].

But we are definitely seeing a lot of interest in AI. There are many, many projects underway now. Just on Vertex alone, the number of projects grew over 7X. And so we see signs of stabilization, and I’m optimistic about what’s ahead.

Google Bard ‘Boosting Creativity And Productivity’

We are focused on boosting creativity and productivity. Bard is particularly helpful here. It’s a direct interface to a conversational LLM, and we think of it as an early experiment and complementary experience to Google Search.

Bard can now integrate with Google apps and services, showing relevant information from Workspace, Maps, YouTube and Google Flights and Hotels. We’ve also improved the ‘Google It’ feature. It provides other sources to help people evaluate Bard’s responses and explore information across the web.

Earlier this month, we announced Assistant with Bard, a personal assistant powered by Generative AI. It combines Bard’s generative and reasoning capabilities with Assistant’s personalized help. You can interact with it through text, voice or images, and in the coming months you’ll be able to opt in on Android and iOS mobile devices.

Our collaborative tools in Workspace and YouTube are also part of how we boost creativity and productivity, and they are seeing great initial traction.

‘Expanding’ Duet AI Capabilities And Integration Across Google Cloud

Duet AI was created using Google’s leading large foundation models and especially trained to help users to be more productive on Google Cloud. We continue expanding its capabilities and integrating it across a wide range of cloud products and services.

With Duet AI, we are helping leading brands like PayPal and Deutsche Bank boost developer productivity. We are enabling retailers like Aritzia and Gymshark to gain new insights for better and faster business results.

In fact, companies are increasingly using AI for the purpose of analyzing data. Customers are choosing Google Cloud because we are the only large cloud provider with a unified platform to analyze structured and unstructured data.

In Workspace, thousands of companies and more than a million trusted testers have used Duet AI.

They are writing and refining content in Gmail and Docs, creating original images from text within Slides, organizing data in Sheets and more. These innovations enable us to provide new services and grow our base of 10 million paying customers, including enterprises like Grupo Boticario, Unilever and Warner Music.

Google Committed To ‘Durably Re-Engineering Our Cost Base’ Via AI

As we expand access to our new AI services, we continue to make meaningful investments in support of our AI efforts.

We remain committed to durably re-engineering our cost base in order to help create capacity for these investments in support of long-term sustainable financial value. Across Alphabet, teams are looking at ways to operate as effectively as possible focused on their biggest priorities.

Building Responsible AI So ‘Everyone Can Benefit’

We are building and deploying AI responsibly so that everyone can benefit.

One area we are focused on is making sure people can more easily identify when they are encountering AI-generated content online. Using new technology powered by Google DeepMind SynthID, images generated by Vertex AI can be watermarked in a way that is invisible to the human eye without reducing the image quality. Underlying all this work is the foundational research done by our teams at Google DeepMind and Google Research.