Over the past 10 years, thousands of developers have flocked to Mountain View, California, to learn about the latest innovations and announcements from the software giant at the Google I/O conference (short for input/output in terms of web development).
More than 7,000 people attended Google's three-day conference this year (from 8th to 10th May) and were provided with a comprehensive picture of Google's upcoming developments. This 2018 event has confirmed some technology trends which are expected to be widespread in the near future.
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Artificial Intelligence
Google's development plan for artificial intelligence (AI) is reflected in their announcement of building a lot more AI centres. In fact, almost all AI software will be updated in 2018, from Google Assistant to News and Photos.
Luckily, Google's plan is to share with the world of machine learning. Google’s ML Kit (Machine Learning Kit) now offers a host of machine learning APIs for businesses to take advantage of. Instead of having to build custom algorithms for everything, Google offers "templates" for some general business demands.
Now, ML Kit makes it easy for developers to integrate image tagging, text recognition, face tracking, barcode scanning and mould recognition.
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Google Assistant
Google Voice Assistant, a voice-activated technology that was only announced two years ago, is currently being used by more than 500 million devices around the world. It's installed in Google Home hardware as well as mobile phones, Google smartwatches, and Pixelbook laptops.
Google is using AI to accomplish its mission of making Google Assistant more natural and able to understand increasingly complex requirements. As the company launches the Continued Conversation feature and the new Multitasking technology, users will be able to request multiple things at the same time. Moreover, Google will provide six new voices to Google Assistant instead of the existing one.
Action Applications
Google has placed an App Action in the launch menu with suggestions based on your daily behaviour. Suggestions now appear below the Google search bar while typing. Shortly thereafter, the proposed actions will also show. The application needs to be optimised to allow this kind of interaction.
To clarify the implications of this improvement, Google has provided an example of Dee search. When users search for this movie, they are reminded of the ticket options or watching trailers. Eventually, many people will choose either one of the two actions, it’s an impressive result.
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Augmented Reality
Google Maps has practically enhanced testing using the combination of Street View and the camera of a smartphone. With AR technology, tutorials will be displayed in front of you by stacking them in the real world's images.
Google I/O last year introduced the Google Lens app, continue with its development, the visual search engine will obtain some AR updates. Now it will repeat real-world text, which means you can copy and paste text from a document that you see and put it into a message. You will also be able to take a photo of the document and convert it to PDF. This technology will be introduced for Google Photos users over the next few months.
We have just gone over some highlights that businesses can benefit from I/O 2018 conference and can understand why Google is one of the leading tech giants in the modern life. Which tech trend benefits your organisation the most? Share with us!