Dive Brief:
- Organizations of all sizes, from startups to large companies, are "thinking about how to use AI to drive transformation," Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Tuesday during the company’s Q1 earnings call.
- The company is already rolling out AI in Google Workspace, including new generative AI features for content creation and collaboration, Pichai said. Workspace is "an area where I think we will see the biggest advances because I think productivity is a strong use case in which generative AI can help.”
- Pichai touted strong results in Google Workspace with increases in both seats and average revenue per seat. Google Cloud, which includes Workspace, reported its first profit Tuesday, with an operating income of $191 million in Q1 for the three-month period ending March 31.
Dive Insight:
Google is racing to deliver generative AI tools following Microsoft’s successful partnership with OpenAI.
Google is building out AI priorities outlined in its February earnings call, including plans to develop large language models, empowering developers with tools and enabling organizations of all sizes to utilize and benefit from the company’s AI advancements. The company consolidated its AI research efforts by combining its Brain team from Google Research and DeepMind, the company announced this week.
Generative AI has captured the zeitgeist as well as regulatory and legal scrutiny. Those in the industry are watching closely to see which hyperscaler emerges as the AI leader and how enterprises implement the technology.
Microsoft, quick to roll out generative AI, is already touting customer growth. Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service has gained more than 2,500 customers, which is “10x quarter over quarter,” for the period ending March 31, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Tuesday, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.
“The excitement around AI is creating new opportunities across every function from marketing, sales and finance to software development and security,” Nadella said.
The company expects to publicly release generative AI capabilities in Microsoft 365 applications in the coming months as Microsoft 365 Copilot.
“Copilot works alongside users embedded in the Microsoft 365 applications millions use every day, and it also powers Business Chat, which uses natural language to surface information and insights based on business content and context,” Nadella said. “We've been encouraged by early feedback and look forward to bringing these experiences to more users in the coming months.”
