In an announcement on Tuesday, Google underscored a similar path to generate profit from A.I. technology: by incorporating it into software that businesses pay for, and selling the underlying A.I. to other organizations.
Google said it would embed A.I. into its email and word-processing tools, Gmail and Docs, so that it could draft emails, job descriptions and other types of documents from simple written prompts. With a few clicks, Google said, users could then adjust the tone to be more playful or professional, and have the A.I. trim or expand on the content. The features will first be available to what the company called trusted users.
Thomas Kurian, the chief executive of Google Cloud, which sells software and services to other businesses, said in a blog post that generative A.I. was a generational shift in technology, akin to the move from desktop computing to mobile devices. Powered by a system known as a large language model, the A.I. can generate text and other media when given short prompts.
Just as software developers flocked to develop applications for the iPhone, Google expects that many programmers will want to build new A.I. applications and businesses. Mr. Kurian said the company would offer two new products, PaLM API and MakerSuite, to aid their efforts.
Google also debuted Generative AI App Builder, a tool to help businesses and governments quickly develop their own chatbots. The company will also let organizations customize A.I. with their own data through an existing product, Vertex AI.
Building large language models is an expensive enterprise requiring rare and specialized engineers, and supercomputers built specifically to handle the processing demands. Most companies will not have the resources to replicate Google’s, Microsoft’s or OpenAI’s years of work building these systems, so the companies are racing to fulfill their demand.
Mr. Kurian said he expected this generation of A.I. to have “a profound effect on every industry.”
Cade Metz contributed reporting.
