Google I/O Connect Conference Bengaluru: Key Takeaways From The Event

During the India-Specific I/O connect conference held in Bengaluru, Google launched a new feature within its Maps called Address Descriptors.

On Wednesday, Google introduced some new AI-powered tools for Indian developers at its first-ever India-Specific I/O connect conference in Bengaluru. These tools aim to improve user experiences, drive digitisation and foster industry growth. During the conference, Google launched a new feature within its Maps called Address Descriptors. From showcasing its support for Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC) to sharing new updates on AI tools, here are the key announcements from the event.

LLM Model

At the event, the company said that the developers in India can now access its new Large Language Model (LLM) PaLM 2. Through this language model, Google aims to bring AI capability to all its products such as Gmail, Google Docs and Bard. According to Google, PaLM 2 has been trained on multilingual texts from over 100 languages.

Apart from this, the company also said that generative AI support is now available on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI. On June 28, Google India tweeted about the same announcing the availability of the model to Indian developers.

“Developers in India will now have access to both PaLM API and Makersuite”, tweeted Google

Project Vaani

Google launched Project Vanni in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) last year, to collect anonymous speech data from people across 773 districts in India. At the I/O Connect Bengaluru, Google announced that IISc is open-sourcing the datasets which it has collected over a year. It will give developers access to over 4,000 hours of speech data across 38 languages, collected from over 10,000 speakers from 80 districts. It can be used by companies to build their own technologies and application to cater to the needs of their customers.

Support to ONDC

Google extended its support for Open Networking Digital Commerce (ONDC) by providing an accelerator program for the same. It will help the business to scale its digital operation and commerce. It will help the developers to enhance their search experiences on their network by giving them access to the Retail search and Discovery AI.

It also announced a startup credits program for organisations under which they will get a $25,000-grant if they enable ONDC.

Improved Maps

The I/O Connect Bengaluru 2023 witnessed the launch of the latest India-Specific feature of Google Maps which will enable developers to help their customers to find addresses easily. This feature is called address descriptors, an India-first experiment that is available in over 25 cities. It will help the customers in finding the address by navigating them through the nearest landmarks and area names.

Project Bindi

Google Launched Project Bindi last year under which they evaluate and mitigate biases in Natural Language Processing within the Indian socio-cultural context. Now, it claims that it has formed a huge SeaGull Database that consists of the datasets which address the stereotypes that exist in India. Google is now open-sourcing the data and will be available for the developers from next month.

Outsourcing of Open Building Datasets

Google will also be outsourcing its open building datasets which are based on satellite images of the more than 200 million buildings that are currently present in India. With this, it aims to help developers in urban planning, environmental science and much more.