The summit was hosted by UAE-based Polynome Group under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Strategic backers included Digital Dubai, Dubai Police, Emirates, Amazon Web Services, NVIDIA, IBM, SAP, MBZUAI among others.

“In just three years, MCS has evolved from a specialist meet‑up into a true crossroads for the world’s top minds in science, business and public policy. The week proved that when researchers, entrepreneurs and governments share one stage, we move a step closer to transparent, human‑centred AI that delivers real value for society,” said Alexander Khanin, founder & CEO of Polynome Group

Landmark agreements announced live on stage

During the two‑day programme, several high‑profile agreements were signed at the summit, including:

• A trilateral Memorandum of Understanding between Astana Hub (Kazakhstan), IT‑Park Uzbekistan and Al‑Farabi Innovation Hub (UAE), creating a Central‑Asia‑to‑MENA soft‑landing platform for high‑growth start‑ups.

• A Google Cloud initiative offering no‑cost “Gen‑AI Leader” learning paths and discounted certification vouchers to accelerate responsible AI adoption across the region.

Polynome Group officially launched AI Academy, an educational initiative developed in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi School of Management and supported by NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Institute. The Academy will offer short executive seminars and a specialised four‑month Mini‑MBA in AI, aimed at equipping leaders and innovators with practical AI knowledge to bridge the gap between technology research and commercial application.

Policy & talent

Day one opened with a ministerial round‑table – “Wanted: AI to Retain and Attract Talent to the Country.” Ministers Omar Sultan Al Olama (UAE), Amr Talaat (Egypt), Gobind Singh Deo (Malaysia), Zhaslan Madiyev (Kazakhstan) and Meutya Hafid (Indonesia) detailed visa‑fast‑track programmes, national GPU clouds and cross‑border sandboxes designed to reverse brain‑drain and accelerate R&D.

Breakthrough research

• Prof. Michael Bronstein (University of Oxford/Google DeepMind) demonstrated Geometric Deep Learning applications that shorten drug‑discovery timelines and model subatomic physics.

• Marco Tempest (NASA JPL/MagicLab.nyc) blended GPT‑4o dialogue with mixed‑reality holograms, turning the stage into an interactive mind‑map.

• Prof. Michal Irani (Weizmann Institute) showed perception‑to‑cognition systems capable of reconstructing scenes from a single gaze sequence.

• Andrea Vedaldi (Oxford) premiered a 3‑D generative‑AI pipeline for instant city‑scale digital twins, while Marc Pollefeys (ETH Zurich/Microsoft) demonstrated real‑time spatial mapping at sub‑10 ms latency.

Industry workshops & panels

AWS ran a hands‑on clinic – “Building Enterprise Gen‑AI Applications” – covering RAG, agentic orchestration and secure deployment. NVIDIA’s workshop unveiled its platform approach to production generative‑AI on Hopper‑class GPUs, complementing its newly announced Service Delivery Partnership with Polynome Group’s legal entity, Intelligent Machines Consultancies. Dubai Police hosted a closed‑door DFA session on predictive policing, while X and AI workshops explored social‑data pipelines on GPU clusters.

The parallel Machines Can Create forum examined AI’s role in luxury, digital art and media, with speakers from HEC Paris, The Sandbox, IBM Research and BBC, culminating in the panel “Pixels and Palettes: The Canvas of Tomorrow.”

Prof. Marc Pollefeys, Director of the Mixed Reality and AI Lab at ETH Zurich and Microsoft, highlighted the role of cutting-edge technology in daily life: “We are at a turning point where technologies like spatial AI and real-time 3D mapping are moving from laboratories into everyday life, transforming cities, workplaces, and how we interact with the digital world. The Machines Can See Summit underscores how collaboration between researchers, industry, and policymakers accelerates this transition, bringing innovative solutions closer to everyone,” he said.

Ethical & security focus

Panels “Good AI: Between Hype and Mediocrity” and “Defending Intelligence: Navigating Adversarial Machine Learning” stressed the need for continuous audits, red‑teaming and transparent supply chains. Dubai Police, TII UAE and IBM urged adoption of ISO‑aligned governance tool‑kits to safeguard public‑sector deployments.

High‑profile awards

On Day Two, H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum presented trophies for the Global Prompt Engineering Championship, for breakthroughs in multilingual, safety-aligned LLM prompting.

Key takeaways

The summit underscored three strategic imperatives for the decade ahead. Talent aviation – backed by unified tech visas, national GPU clouds and government‑funded sandbox clusters – is emerging as the most effective antidote to AI brain‑drain. Spatial computing is moving from laboratory to street level as sub‑10‑millisecond mapping unlocks safe humanoid robotics and city‑scale augmented‑reality services. Finally, secure generative AI must couple adversarial robustness with transparent, explainable pipelines before the technology can achieve mass‑market adoption in regulated industries.

The post “Machines Can See 2025” wraps in Dubai after two‑day showcase of AI appeared first on AI News.

The world’s third largest economy and host nation for GITEX EUROPE x Ai Everything, Germany’s role as the European economic and technology leader is confirmed as its ICT sector is projected to reach €232.8bn in 2025 (Statista).

GITEX EUROPE x Ai Everything is Europe’s largest tech, startup and digital investment event, and is organised by KAOUN International. It’s hosted in partnership with the Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises, Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Berlin Partner for Business and Technology, and the European Innovation Council (EIC).

Global tech engages for cross-border and industry partnerships

The first GITEX EUROPE brings together over 1,400 tech enterprises, startups and SMEs, and platinum sponsors AWS and IBM. Also in sponsorship roles are Cisco, Cloudflare, Dell, Fortinet, Lenovo, NTT, Nutanix, Nvidia, Opswat, and SAP.

GITEX EUROPE x Ai Everything will comprise of tech companies from over 100 countries and 34 European states, including tech pavilions from India, Italy, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, South Korea, UK, and the UAE.

Trixie LohMirmand, CEO of KAOUN International, organiser of GITEX worldwide, said: “There is a sense of urgency and unity in Europe to assert its digital sovereignty and leadership as a global innovation force. The region is paving its way as a centre-stage where AI, quantum and deep tech will be debated, developed, and scaled.”

Global leaders address EU’s tech crossroads

Organisers state there will be over 500 speakers, debating a range of issues including AI and quantum, cloud, and data sovereignty.

Already confirmed are Geoffrey Hinton, Physics Nobel Laureate (2024); Kai Wegner, Mayor of Berlin; H.E. Jelena Begović, Serbian Minister of Science, Technological Development and Innovation; António Henriques, CEO, Bison Bank; Jager McConnell, CEO, Crunchbase; Mark Surman, President, Mozilla; and Sandro Gianella, Head of Europe & Middle East Policy & Partnerships, OpenAI.

Europe’s moves in AI, deep tech & quantum

Europe is focusing on cross-sector AI uses, new investments and international partnerships. Ai Everything Europe, the event’s AI showcase and conference, brings together AI architects, startups and investors to explore AI ecosystems.

Topics presented on stage range from EuroStack ambitions to implications of agentic AI, with speakers including Martin Kon, President and COO, Cohere; Daniel Verten, Strategy Partner, Synthesia; and Professor Dr. Antonio Krueger, CEO of German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence.

On the show-floor, attendees will be able to experience Brazil’s Ubivis’s smart factory technology, powered by IoT and digital twins, and Hexis’s AI-driven nutrition plans that are trusted by 500+ Olympic and elite athletes.

With nearly €7 billion in quantum investment, Europe is pushing for quantum leadership by 2030. GITEX Quantum Expo (GQX) (in partnership with IBM and QuIC) covers quantum research and cross-industry impact with showcases and conferences.

Speakers include Mira Wolf-Bauwens, Responsible Quantum Computing Lead, IBM Research, Switzerland; Joachim Mnich, Director of Research & Computing, CERN, Switzerland; Neil Abroug, Head of the French National Quantum Strategy, INRIA; and Jan Goetz, CEO & Co-Founder, IQM Quantum Computers, Finland.

Cyber Valley: Building a resilient cyber frontline

With cloud breaches doubling in number and AI-driven attacks, threat response and cyber resilience are core focuses at the event. Fortinet, CrowdStrike, Kaspersky, Knowbe4, and Proofpoint will join other cybersecurity companies exhibiting at GITEX Cyber Valley.

They’ll be alongside law enforcement leaders, global CISOs, and policymakers on stage, including Brig. Gen. Dr. Volker Pötzsch, Chief of Division Cyber/IT & AI, Federal Ministry of Defence, Germany; H.E. Dr. Mohamed Al-Kuwaiti, Head of Cybersecurity, UAE Government; Miguel De Bruycker, Managing Director General, Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium; and Ugo Vignolo Lutati, Group CISO, Prada Group.

GITEX Green Impact: For a sustainable future

GITEX Green Impact connects innovators and investors with over 100 startups and investors exploring how green hydrogen, bio-energy, and next-gen energy storage are moving from R&D to deployment.

Key speakers so far confirmed are Gavin Towler, Chief Scientist for Sustainability Technologies & CTO, Honeywell; Julie Kitcher, Chief Sustainability Officer, Airbus; Lisa Reehten, Managing Director, Bosch Climate Solutions; Massimo Falcioni, Chief Competitiveness Officer, Abu Dhabi Investment Office; and Mounir Benaija, CTO – EV & Charging Infrastructure, TotalEnergies.

Convening the largest startup ecosystem among 60+ nations

GITEX EUROPE x Ai Everything hosts North Star Europe, the local version of the world’s largest startup event, Expand North Star.

North Star Europe gathers over 750 startups and 20 global unicorns, among them reMarkable, TransferMate, Solarisbank AG, Bolt, Flix, and Glovo.

The event features a curated collection of earlys and growth-stage startups from Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Netherlands, Switzerland, Serbia, UK, and UAE.

Among the startups, Neurocast.ai (Netherlands) is advancing AI-powered neurotech for Alzheimer’s research; CloudBees (Switzerland) is the delivery unicorn backed by Goldman Sachs, HSBC, and Lightspeed; and Semiqon (Finland), the world’s first CMOS transistor with the ability to perform in cryogenic conditions.

More than 600 investors with $1tn assets under management will be scouting for new opportunities, including Germany’s Earlybird VC, Austria’s SpeedInvest, Switzerland’s B2Venture, Estonia’s Startup Wise Guys, and the US’s SOSV.

GITEX ScaleX launches as a first-of-its-kind growth platform for scale-ups and late-stage companies, in partnership with AWS.

With SMEs making up 99% of European businesses, GITEX SMEDEX connects SMEs with international trade networks and investors, for funding, legal advice, and market access to scale globally.

Backed by EISMEA and ICC Digital Standards Initiative, the event features SME ecosystem leaders advising from the stage, including Milena Stoycheva, Chairperson of Board of Innovation, Ministry of Innovation and Growth, Bulgaria; and Oliver Grün, President, European Digital SME Alliance and BITMi.

GITEX EUROPE is part of the GITEX global network tech and startup events, taking place in Germany, Morocco, Nigeria, Singapore, Thailand, and the UAE.

For more information, please visit: www.gitex-europe.com.

The post Reigniting the European digital economy’s €200bn AI ambitions appeared first on AI News.

Machines Can See is staged by the Polynome Group, a machine vision, AI, robotic, and industrial design company based in the city.

This is the third year of the event, and will bring investors, business leaders, and policymakers together to explore AI-centric expansion opportunities. Machines Can See, as the name suggests, will have a particular focus on computer vision.

Each discussion and keynote is designed to be firmly rooted in practical applications of AI technology, but organisers hope that the show will be permeated with a sense of discovery and that attendees will be able to explore the possibilities of the tech on show. “We are not just shaping the future of AI, we are defining how AI shapes the world,” said Alexander Khanin, head of the Polynome Group.

UAE Government officials attending the event include H.E. Omar Sultan Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, and H.E. Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, the Director General of Digital Dubai.

Polynome Group has said that X will be the official streaming partner for Machines Can See 2025, and the US company will host workshops titled “X and AI” to show solutions that merge AI and streaming technologies, with GRok X central to those sessions. Via interactive demos, attendees will gain firsthand experience of GRok’s potential in AI delivery, analysis and optimisation.

Investment and business opportunities

UAE’s AI market is projected to grow by $8.4 billion in the next two years, and the summit is designed to serve as a venue for investors to engage with AI startups, existing enterprises, and government decision-makers. Attendees at Machines Can See will get to meet with investors and venture capital firms, be given the opportunity to meet executives from AI companies (including IBM and Amazon), and connect with startups seeking investment.

The summit is supported by Amazon Prime Video & Studios, Amazon Web Services, Dubai Police, MBZUAI, IBM, SAP, Adia Lab, QuantumBlack and Yango. The involvement of many organisations and large-scale enterprises should provide many opportunities for funding and collaborations that extend the commercial use of AI.

Local and international investors include Eddy Farhat, Executive Director at e& capital, Faris Al Mazrui, Head of Growth Investments at Mubadala, Major General Khalid Nasser Alrazooqi General Director of Artificial Intelligence, Dubai Police UEA, and Dr. Najwa Aaraj, the CEO of TII.

Speakers and insights

The summit will feature several US-based AI professionals, including Namik Hrle, IBM Fellow and Vice President of Development at the IBM Software Group, Michael Bronstein, DeepMind Professor of AI at Oxford University, Marc Pollefeys, Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, Gerard Medioni, VP and Distinguished Scientist at Amazon Prime Video & Studio, and Deva Ramanan, Professor at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.

The event will feature a ministerial session composed of international government representatives to discuss the role of national IT development.

Among speakers already confirmed for the event are Gobind Singh Deo, Malaysia’s Minister of Digital, H.E. Zhaslan Madiyev, Minister of Digital Development, Innovation, and Aerospace Industry of Kazakhstan, and H.E. Omar Sultan Al Olama, UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications.

Event organisers expect to announce more representatives from overseas in the coming days. Read more here.

The post Machines Can See 2025 – Dubai AI event appeared first on AI News.

GITEX ASIA 2025 will bring together 700+ tech companies, featuring 400+ startups and digital promotion agencies, and 250+ global investors & VCs from 60+ countries.

The event will serve as a bridge between the Eastern and Western technology ecosystems and feature 180+ hours of expert insights from 220 global thought leaders.

GITEX ASIA 2025 is set to foster cross-border collaboration, investment, and innovation, connecting global tech enterprises, unicorn founders, policymakers, SMEs, and academia to shape the future of digital transformation in Asia.

GITEX ASIA 2025 will comprise of five co-located events:

• AI EVERTYTHING SINGAPORE – the AI showcase.
• NORTHSTAR ASIA – for startups and investors
• GITEX CYBER VALLEY ASIA – helping create a defence ecosystem for governments and businesses
• GITEX QUANTUM QUANTUM EXPO ASIA – Asia’s quantum frontier
• GITEX DIGI HEALTH & BIOTECH SINGAPORE – the healthcare revolution

GITEX ASIA 2025 will host a lineup of conferences and summits, exploring a range of transformative trends in technology and investment. Key themes will include AI, cloud & connectivity, cybersecurity, quantum, health tech & biotech, green tech & smart cities, startups & investors, and SMEs.

Sessions will include Asia Digital AI Economy, AI Everything: AI Adoption & Commercialisation, Cybersecurity: AI-Enabled Cybersecurity & Critical Infrastructure, Digital Health, and the Supernova Pitch Competition.

The event will bring together leading voices and ideas from different industries, including public services, retail, finance, education, health, and manufacturing.

Be part of the action at GITEX ASIA 2025 and witness the future of technology unfold in Singapore. For more information and updates on GITEX ASIA, visit www.gitexasia.com

Social media links: LinkedIn | X | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

The post GITEX GLOBAL in Asia: The largest tech show in the world appeared first on AI News.

Scheduled for 5 – 6 May 2025 at the JW Marriott Hotel in Riyadh, this event will bring together 300+ data and AI professionals, including CDOs, CIOs, data scientists, AI directors, C-suite executives and many others, to explore the latest advances, tackle challenges, and unlock opportunities in data and artificial intelligence.

With the Kingdom’s data analytics market projected to reach $8.8 billion by 2030, the summit comes at an important time, offering a platform for public and private sector leaders to collaborate, innovate, and approach the nation’s Vision 2030 goals.

A platform for innovation and collaboration

Building on the success of its debut last year, which was inaugurated by a leading official from the Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA), the 2025 edition promises to be bigger and more impactful.

The summit will feature:

• 25+ cutting-edge solution providers showcasing the latest technologies in data and AI.

• 50+ industry experts sharing insights on emerging trends, challenges, and opportunities.

• 300+ attendees, including data engineers, architects, AI pioneers, and decision-makers from Saudi Arabia’s largest organisations.

• 1:1 meetings to foster collaboration and evaluate tailored solutions.

• CPD-accredited sessions to help professionals enhance their skills and advance their careers.

Unveiling the future of data and AI

The summit’s agenda will look at important topics shaping the future of data and AI, including:

• Navigating open data in Saudi Arabia

• AI fusion and machine learning innovations

• Data virtualisation and the power of data mesh

• Ethical data governance and cybersecurity analytics

• Unified data cloud architectures

Discussions will be led by thought leaders from the Kingdom’s top organisations, including Ministry of Hajj & Umrah, Insurance Authority, Council of Health Insurance, NEOM, AlNASSR Club Company | PIF, and Abdul Latif Jameel United Finance.

DAMA Saudi Arabia joins as supporting partner

The Data Management Association (DAMA Saudi Arabia), the Kingdom’s largest data management community, has joined the summit as a supporting partner. The partnership underscores DAMA’s commitment to fostering a robust data management ecosystem and aligns with the summit’s mission to elevate Saudi Arabia’s position as a global leader in data and AI.

Abdulaziz Almanea, Founder & Chairman of the Board, DAMA Saudi, spoke of the importance of the summit: “Artificial intelligence is only as good as the data behind it. Quality, governance, and ethics must come first to ensure trust, accuracy, and impact. As Saudi Arabia accelerates its data-driven transformation, industry events like the Smart Data & AI Summit serve as vital platforms for bringing experts together to shape the future of AI with responsible and innovative data practices.”

A legacy of excellence

The inaugural edition of the summit set a high benchmark, with attendees praising the quality of speakers, depth of discussions, and opportunities for networking and collaboration. Nayef Al-Otaibi, VP & Chief Digital Officer at Saudi Aramco, said, “The event was well-managed, the coordination was excellent, and the quality of the speakers was above expectations. It was a beautiful experience connecting with industry experts during the panel discussions and sharing our experiences. This could basically help us establish the platform and collaborate and work together in future.”

Driving Vision 2030 forward

The Smart Data & AI Summit is a strategic initiative to support Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 goals. By bringing together global expertise, cutting-edge technologies, and local insights, the summit aims to:

• Accelerate the Kingdom’s digital transformation.

• Foster innovation and collaboration across industries.

• Address regulatory challenges and ethical considerations in data and AI.

• Unlock new opportunities for investment and growth in the Kingdom’s data and AI sectors.

Sudhir Ranjan Jena, CEO & Co-founder of Tradepass, the organising body, spoke of the summit’s mission: “The data & AI sector is entering a transformative chapter, fuelled by technology disruptions, heightened expectations, and the unprecedented expansion of digital tools and platforms. In the upcoming edition, we will delve into Vision 2030 goals, unlock limitless opportunities, and explore emerging trends and solutions that will play an integral role in shaping the Kingdom’s post-oil economy.”

A high-impact speaker lineup

The summit will feature an impressive roster of speakers, including:

• Dr Ahmed Alzahrani – Director of Business Intelligence and Data Analytics Centre, Ministry of Hajj & Umrah

• Hajar Alolah – Data Governance and Management Office Director, Saudi Development Bank

• Abdullah AlBar – Chief Data Officer, Abdul Latif Jameel United Finance

• Usamah Algemili – Chief Data Executive, Insurance Authority

• Jawad Saleemi – Director – AI & Cloud, Telenor

• Abbasi Poonawala – Executive Director – Enterprise Architecture, Alinma Bank

• Nawaf Alghamdi – Director – Data Analytics & AI, Council of Health Insurance

These experts will share their insights on the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in data and AI, offering attendees strategies to drive innovation and growth in their organisations.

For more information, visit: https://saudi.smartdataseries.com/

Media contact:

Shrinkhal Sharad
PR & Communication Lead
Tradepass
Email: shrinkhals@tradepassglobal.com
Phone: + (91) 80 6166 4401

The post The Kingdom’s digital transformation showcased at Smart Data & AI Summit appeared first on AI News.

The last-minute event was largely seen as a response to Microsoft’s integration of OpenAI’s models into its products. Just yesterday, Microsoft held an even more impromptu event where it announced that a new version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot – based on GPT-4 – will be integrated into the Edge browser and Bing search engine.

Google was expected to make a large number of AI announcements at its I/O developer conference in May. The event this week felt like a rushed and unpolished attempt by Google to remind the world (or, more likely, investors) that it’s also an AI leader and hasn’t been left behind.

OpenAI reportedly set off alarm bells at Google with ChatGPT. At the invite of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the company’s founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – returned for a series of meetings to review Google’s AI product strategy.

In the wake of those meetings, it was allegedly decided that Google will speed up its AI review process so it can deploy solutions more quickly. Amid those reports, and Google’s firing of high-profile ethics researchers, many are concerned that the company will rush unsafe products to market.

Prabhakar Raghavan, SVP at Google, led proceedings. In his opening remarks, he stated that Google’s goal is to “significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible”. Throughout the event, various speakers appeared to really want to push the narrative that Google won’t take risks.

“When it comes to AI, it’s critical that we bring models to the world responsibly,” said Raghavan.

Google Search

Search is Google’s bread-and-butter. The threat that a ChatGPT-enhanced Bing could pose to Google appears to have been what caused such alarm within the company.

“Search is still our biggest moonshot,” said Raghavan. Adding, “the moon keeps moving.”

Google used this section to highlight some of the advancements it’s been making in the background that most won’t be aware of. This has included the use of zero-shot machine translation to add two dozen new languages to Google Translate over the past year.

Another product that continues to be enhanced by AI is Google Lens, which is now used more than 10 billion times per month.

“The camera is the next keyboard,” explains Raghavan. “The age of visual search is here.”

Liz Reid, VP of Engineering at Google, took the stage to provide an update on what the company is doing in this area.

Google Lens is being expanded to support video content. A user can activate Lens, touch something they want to learn more about in a video clip (such as a landmark), and Google will bring up more information about it.

“If you can see it, you can search it,” says Reid.

Multi-search is another impressive visual search enhancement that Google showed off. The feature allows users to search with both an image and text so, for example, you could try and find a specific chair or item of clothing in a different colour.

Google was going to give a live demo of multi-search but awkwardly lost the phone. Fortunately, the company says that it’s now live globally so you can give it a go yourself.

Few companies have access to the amount of information about the world and its citizens that Google does. Privacy arguments aside, it enables the company to offer powerful services that complement one another.

Reid says that users will be able to take a photo of something like a bakery item and ask Google to source a nearby place from Google Maps where the person can get their hands on an equivalent. Google says that feature is coming soon to images on mobile search results pages.

Bard

Prabhakar retook the stage to discuss Google’s response to ChatGPT.

Google’s conversational AI service is called Bard and it’s powered by LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications).

LaMDA is a model that’s built on Transformer, a neural network architecture that Google Research invented and open-sourced in 2017. Instead of relying on pre-defined responses like older chatbots, LaMDA is trained on dialogue for more open-ended natural interactions and can deliver up-to-date information from the web.

In an example of an interaction, Prabhakar asked Bard what he should consider when buying a new car. He then asked for the pros and cons of an electric car. Finally, he asked Bard to help him plan a road trip.

Bard is now available to trusted testers but Prabhakar says that Google is going to check it meets the company’s “high bar” for safety before a broader rollout.

The company says that it’s embracing NORA (No One Right Answer) for questions like, “What is the best constellation to look for when stargazing?” as it’s subjective. Generative AI will be used in such instances to bring multiple viewpoints to results—which sounds quite similar to what it’s been doing in Google News for some time to help address bias concerns.

Prabhakar goes on to highlight the potential for generative AI goes far beyond text. The SVP highlights that Google can use generative AI to create a 360-degree view of items like sneakers from just a handful of images.

Next month, Google will begin onboarding developers for its Generative Language API to help them access some powerful capabilities. Initially, the API will be powered by LaMDA. Prabhakar says that “a range of models” will follow.

Google Maps

Chris Phillips, Head of Google’s Geo Group, took to the stage to give an overview of some of the AI enhancements the company is bringing to Google Maps.

Phillips says that AI is “powering the next-generation of Google Maps”. Google is using AI to fuse billions of Street View and real-world images to evolve 2D maps into “multi-dimensional views” that will enable users to virtually soar over buildings if they’re planning a visit.

However, most impressive is how AI is enabling Google to take 2D images of indoor locations and turn them into 3D that people can explore. One provided example of where this could be useful is checking out a restaurant ahead of a date to see whether the lighting and general ambience is romantic:

Additional enhancements are being made to ‘Search with Live View’ which uses AR to help people find things nearby like ATMs.

When searching for things like coffee shops, you can see if they’re open and even how busy they typically are all from the AR view.

Google says that it’s making its largest expansion of indoor live view today. Indoor live view is expanding to 1000 new airports, train stations, and shopping centres.

Finally, Google is helping users make more sustainable transport choices. Phillips says that Google wants to “make the sustainable choice, the easy choice”.

New Google Maps features for electric vehicle owners will help with trip planning by factoring in traffic, charge level, and energy consumption. Charging stop recommendations will be improved and a “Very fast” charging filter will help EV owners pick somewhere they can get topped up quickly and be on their way.

Even more sustainable than EV driving is walking. Google is making walking directions more “glanceable” from your route overview. The company says that it’s rolling out globally on Android and iOS over the coming months.

Prabhakar retakes the stage to highlight that Google is “25 years into search” but teases that in some ways is “only just beginning.” He goes on to say that more is in the works and the “best is yet to come.”

Google I/O 2023 just got that much more exciting.

(Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash)

The post Google unveils AI enhancements to Search and Maps appeared first on AI News.

The web giant says the event will provide an update on how Google is “using the power of AI to reimagine how people search for, explore, and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need.”

OpenAI reportedly set off alarm bells at Google with ChatGPT. At the invite of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the company’s founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – returned for a series of meetings to review Google’s AI product strategy.

In the wake of those meetings, it was allegedly decided that Google will speed up its AI review process so it can deploy solutions more quickly.

Microsoft has invested over $10 billion in OpenAI and has begun integrating the company’s powerful AI models into its products.

In the coming weeks, Microsoft is set to go after Google’s main product – Google Search – by integrating a more powerful version of ChatGPT into Bing. The version that will be integrated into Bing will be powered by GPT-4.

Baidu, the “Google of China,” is expected to reveal its own AI-powered chatbot in March that will be integrated into the company’s search product. The model powering Baidu’s alternative is called ERNIE.

In 2021, Baidu’s researchers posted a paper on ERNIE 3.0 in which they claim the model exceeds human performance on the SuperGLUE natural language benchmark. ERNIE 3.0 set a new top score on SuperGLUE and displaced efforts from Google and Microsoft.

Baidu isn’t a threat to Google’s search business like Microsoft is, but could make Google look like it’s just playing catch up to rivals. To avoid that, Google appears to be fast-tracking its announcements.

Google was initially expected to make its AI announcements during its I/O developer conference in May. However, by that time, rivals like Microsoft and Baidu will have already launched their own alternatives. What’s currently new and exciting will be yawn-inducing come May.

Now it looks like we’ll be seeing at least some of what Google has cooking a lot sooner. Google will be hosting its 40-minute event on YouTube on February 8th at 8:30am ET (1:30pm GMT).

(Image Credit: Google)

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

The post Google will leapfrog rivals with AI event next week appeared first on AI News.