Google touts AI's real-world business model
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Screenshot: Amazon. Photo: Mattel
Google used its Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas this week to show how its AI tools are helping customers make faster, smarter decisions at a time when many companies are still struggling to figure out how to use the tech effectively.
Why it matters: Tech companies have poured billions into generative AI while many of their enterprise customers have yet to identify problems the technology is ready to solve today.
Driving the news: In addition to introducing a bevy of new products and services, Google is detailing its work with more than 500 customers as part of a push to show that AI is ready to do real work.
Zoom in: One of those companies is Mattel, which last year used Google's BigQuery AI tool to quickly understand why its latest Barbie Dreamhouse was getting negative feedback.
- Google's AI tools helped Mattel solve a problem involving Barbie's elevator door getting stuck. The toy was already on store shelves, but thanks to the AI, Mattel was able to fix things within the same production run by tweaking the way the product was packaged, handled and assembled.
- "By the time we had to replenish [store shelves], we had already made the change," Joseph Vinhais, Mattel senior VP of quality, safety and sustainability, told Axios.
- The star rating went up, and customers could see that the company was listening, Vinhais said.
Zoom out: Google also used its Cloud Next conference to announce a variety of new products and updates, including its latest AI chip — the TPUv7 — and debuted A2A, its proposal for a protocol that would help AI agents from different companies talk to one another.
- In Google Workspace, businesses will be able to get natural-sounding AI-generated audio summaries from Google Docs and insights from Sheets without using prompts.
- Google DeepMind also released the latest version of AlphaFold for broader research use, though it's still limited to noncommercial applications.
- Among Google's many partner announcements was that Gemini will be a part of Samsung's Ballie, a home robot due out this summer.
The big picture: Google and rivals such as Microsoft and OpenAI are eager to prove that their AI tools are not just powerful, but can deliver real business value today.
- CEOs and boards feel intense pressure to have a clear AI strategy, even as many struggle to find broad uses for the technology beyond coding and customer support.
