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- Google's Gemini AI model is now available for companies to use through its Vertex AI tool.
- The model will soon able to help businesses create their own internal search engines.
- "Think of it as Google quality search. But for a company's data," the CEO of Google Cloud said.
Gemini, Google's rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT, is now available for companies to use.
On Wednesday, Google announced that it's integrated the large language model into Vertex AI, a Google Cloud tool that can help developers fine-tune AI models. That'll give Vertex AI users access to new, Gemini-powered capabilities, including being able to build their own chatbots.
And coming soon: the ability to search internal information such as company document repositories, enterprise applications, and websites — all without code, Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said in a press briefing.
"Think of it as Google quality search. But for a company's data," Kurian said.
By asking the tool questions in plain English, Vertex AI Search can scour through a company's internal images and text — accessible through apps like OneDrive, Dropbox, or Salesforce — to generate answers and provide summaries.
In fact, Vertex AI Search can search through different sources of information at once. A vendor, for instance, can search through its retail catalog and inventory management system at the same time to see if a product is still available. Another potential example: looking at both transportation and logistics information to see how long it'll take for a product to get to a customer in a retail store.
For those concerned about privacy, a Google spokesperson told Business Insider that "customers remain in control of their data" and that the company "never uses customer data to train our models."
It's not just search, though; the Gemini-Vertex AI integration lets companies build their own internal conversational AI chatbots. These could, for example, help a new call center agent learn how to speak to a customer through AI-generated scripts, Kurian said. The benefit: "Allowing product managers, customer service teams to build these without requiring a developer."
Google also rolled out a series of other capabilities, including Imagen 2. Available to Vertex AI adopters, it now uses text-to-image capabilities to generate logos and image captions in multiple languages. Duet AI, an AI collaborator on Google Workspace that incorporates Gemini, can now help developers code faster, streamline repetitive tasks, and accelerate troubleshooting, according to the company.
Some Gemini Pro tools — including Duet AI — are currently free to use for developers and businesses, within limits, until the AI model is rolled out to to the general public.
A basic version of Gemini Pro is available for the public to use through Google's AI chatbot, Bard.