Google grants limited access to its Gemini AI product to select institutions
Google has granted partial access to its upcoming conversational AI product, according to a report from The Information on Sept. 15.
That report indicates that Google has given a limited number of companies access to the product named Gemini, which has yet to be released more broadly. Gemini features a collection of large-language models (LLMs) that are capable of powering chatbots, generating and summarizing text, and producing code and images.
While Google initially plans to offer a limited version of Gemini, later versions are meant to compete with and operate on the scale of OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Google is expected to offer Gemini through Google Cloud Vertex AI, an online portal that provides developers with access to AI models and other tools.
While Microsoft has contributed to OpenAI, Google has increased its investments in generative AI elsewhere. The firm notably made investments in Anthropic AI and Runway, two other competing AI firms, in the first half of 2023.
Google has not officially announced Gemini’s broadened availability. Instead, The Information cites individuals familiar with the matter as its source.
Nevertheless, Google has confirmed that the product exists. Google originally announced Gemini in May 2023. Though Google said that the model was still in training, it said that it saw “impressive multimodal capabilities” that it had not previously seen, meaning that Gemini is highly capable of working with different types of input.
Google is pursuing several AI goals
In late August, Google announced news related to several other AI pursuits, including its collaborative AI tool Duet and its improved AI chips, through its Cloud division. Those announcements also unveiled AI partnerships with popular companies such as Estee Lauder, FOX Sports, GE Appliance, General Motors, and others.
Google additionally offers AI services aimed at consumers through Bard, an AI chatbot that is primarily intended to generate written content. The company’s currently available AI model, PaLM 2, underlies Bard and certain other services.
Incidentally, Google CEO Sundar Pichai is among the numerous tech CEOs attending a closed-door AI summit that U.S. senators are currently holding.