Google held their annual IO developer conference yesterday and the theme was, unquestionably, artificial intelligence.

Below are a few quick thoughts on what I think are the most important announcements.

Bard & PaLM 2

Bard is no longer behind a waitlist and the underlying model has been updated to PaLM 2.

PaLM 2 comes in five different sizes. The smallest model, named Gecko, is optimized to run locally on mobile devices. Google didn’t specify which size is currently behind Bard.

Like ChatGPT, “tools” are coming to Bard. Integrations with first-party Google services will be available first. Later, third-party developers, including Instacart, Adobe Firefly, and Wolfram Alpha, will have plugins available.

“In the next few weeks” Bard will become more multimodal. It will be able to output images and will accept images as prompt inputs, similar to the (not yet available) GPT-4 multimodal capabilities.

A new larger and more powerful model, Gemini, is now is training and will be added to Bard at some point in the future.

Generative AI answers are coming to Search—Google will be adding an “AI Snapshot” section above its traditional search listings.

Ads will be shown above the AI Snapshot box and products from Google’s Shopping Graph will be suggested as a part of its answers, when relevant.

You will be able to engage in a freeform back-and-forth chat to elaborate on generated answers. This might be the closest anyone has come to the UI I suggested back in January.

These new features will be available as a part of the Search Labs program “in the coming weeks.”

It should be noted that this is not the “Google Inbox Strategy” I was optimistic about a few weeks ago. These features will be coming to Google proper—not some new experimental “Magi” interface. This a bold move; time will tell if it is the correct one.

Tailwind

Although it is just a “prototype,” Tailwind might be one of the first true AI-native applications I’ve seen. Google describes it as an “AI-first notebook.” Out of everything announced yesterday, it is Tailwind that we know the least about. If it is done correctly, though, it could be an extremely compelling product.

This is the type of weird, one off, Inbox-style experiment I want to see more of.

Sidekick

In what is clearly a response to Microsoft’s new 365 Copilot feature, Google previewed “Sidekick.” In Google Docs and other Workspace applications there will be an AI-powered side panel that will offer suggestions based off on information from all of your Workspace documents. I think Copilot is a great idea and there is no reason to think this will be any different.

Google Assistant

Notable in that there was absolutely no mention of it at the conference.

I am sure I will have more to say about all of this once these features become public. For now, it is evident that Google feels significant pressure from Microsoft and does not intend to go down without a fight.