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Google is transitioning to “an AI-first company,” the firm’s Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai revealed during a Thursday conference call following the tech giant’s Q1 2017 earnings report. While speaking to investors and analysts, the top executive at Google said that the Mountain View-based tech giant has been committing significant resources to driving the advancements of artificial intelligence technologies in recent years, adding how he’s “really happy” with the company’s transition towards AI-based solutions.
While AI on its own materialized in a number of Google’s recently launched products like the Google Assistant, the Alphabet-owned company is also increasing its investments in this field due to its intention to ennoble all of its existing and future portfolio with AI-powered solutions. Everything from Google Translate, Maps, and Search already relies on machine learning and general artificial intelligence technologies to some degree, and the Silicon Valley giant is seemingly adamant to continue pursuing that strategy with the goal of improving its offerings and stand out from the competition. Google’s efforts to integrate AI into its previously released products are already reflected in a number of the company’s recent moves, including the rollout of the Google Assistant to non-Pixel smartphones. The company’s voice-enabled digital companion is currently available on a wide variety of devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow and never versions of its open source operating system, in addition to launching on wearables powered by Android Wear 2.0. Google is currently in the process of bringing the Google Assistant to the Android TV ecosystem and will likely expand its availability even further in the future.
The company’s latest conference call also revealed that Google is currently collaborating with third-party hardware and software companies in an effort to bring more features to its AI assistant, though the Internet giant provided no details on the matter. Furthermore, the Google Assistant is reportedly affecting the company’s flagship Search product that’s now better at answering conversational queries that users are becoming increasingly more comfortable with asking, Pichai said. The firm’s top executive also referred to the recently announced Federated Learning technology that Google is hoping will improve its deep neural networks without compromising the privacy of its users, implying that more details on the advancements of this solution will be available in the near future.