Dive Brief:
- Google introduced its next-generation large language model, Gemini 1.5, in a blog post Thursday.
- Google sees its latest model as a “step change” in its approach, according to Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind CEO. The company is releasing Gemini 1.5 Pro, a mid-size multimodal model that performs at a similar level to Gemini 1.0 Ultra, for early testing.
- The model has a standard 128,000 token context window, but there is an option to significantly increase that window, running up to 1 million tokens. Google is offering a limited preview of the “experimental feature” to developers and enterprise customers, CEO Sundar Pichai said in the blog post.
Dive Insight:
Google is continuing to work on the generative AI strategy it laid out a year ago. The introduction of the next generation of Gemini models comes on the heels of unifying its generative AI services under the moniker.
Google seemed to be caught off guard following the success of Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI and the launch of ChatGPT, but the landscape has since shifted.
“It is no longer the case that Google is playing catch up,” Chirag Dekate, VP analyst at Gartner, told CIO Dive.
Google has one of the only sets of natively multimodal large language models, giving it an advantage over other providers. But it lacks the reach of other cloud hyperscalers that are hoping enterprise customers expand their usage to get the latest AI capabilities.
Cloud market share shifted slightly from Q3 to Q4 last year, but Google Cloud held steady at 11%, making it the smallest of the three hyperscalers. AWS’ commanding share dipped two percentage points to 31% and Microsoft inched up one percentage point to 24%, according to Synergy Research Group analysis.
"Frankly, the generative AI opportunity for Google could be a potential market-share-changing opportunity," Dekate said. "But only if [the company] manages to connect this innovation to enterprise impact. Otherwise, enterprise leaders' eyes are going to gloss over and see this as yet another model in the industry.”
