Google-parent company Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) has announced its latest artificial intelligence tools and services, including Duet AI and Vertex AI, at this year’s Google Cloud Next event. Yahoo Finance Tech Editor Dan Howley details these new productivity features for Google’s Workspace and Cloud services, while also commenting on Apple’s next product event scheduled to kick off on September 12.
Video Transcript
AKIKO FUJITA: Google unveiling a number of AI tools and partnerships at its annual Google Cloud Next event. The series of AI announcements comes as the tech giant continues to battle rivals Microsoft and Amazon in the cloud space. Here with the details, we’ve got Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley. Dan, how does this stack up against some of Google’s competitors?
DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, it’s looking like it’s going to be a continuing part of this fierce battle we’re seeing between Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Let’s go over some of the things that they announced today. There was their Vertex AI announcement, their Duet AI announcement, and then some AI-optimized infrastructure.
So let’s talk about Duet AI. They came out with pricing for this. This is basically the competitor to Microsoft’s 365 Copilot, which is basically an AI assistant for its various 365 processing business and enterprise services.
So when we look at Duet AI, the price is going to be $30 per month per user for Workspace. There’s Duet AI Workspace and Duet AI for Google Cloud. Now, the Workspace version, that’s basically what you would do if, you know, you’re typing up a document or going in Gmail or using some PowerPoint or a spreadsheet. This is going to be where you’ll usually probably work if you’re a normal worker. We– I know we use Workspace here at Yahoo Finance.
And so the features here are actually pretty interesting. It will allow you– the AI to attend a meeting for you. So instead of having you sit in, meetings, you should– you can just type in attend a meeting. And then Duet AI will sit in the meeting for you. It’s not going to be like a robot or anything. It’s just going to have a blank space. And then it’ll be able to provide you with highlights from the meeting later on.
So look, if you have a grueling schedule or you just hate meetings, this is probably a good way to avoid that while still getting all the information you need. They also will automatically translate captions into a number of languages. So if you’re on a call with people who speak multiple languages, this would allow you to then be able to communicate with them more easily.
And it’s also going to be able to craft summaries from different sources. So whether that’s items from Google Drive or Gmail, it’ll be able to pull those documents in that data and then summarize it for you in a coherent manner. So this way, you don’t have to go in, you know, Google Drive here and look at this, a Word doc or, you know, regular doc or a PowerPoint here or chart there. It’ll be able to do all of that for you easily.
Then we also have some of the stuff from Google Cloud is it’ll help with– Duet AI will help with programming, you know, basically for developers. And then they’re also going to be providing a custom Google chip for Google Cloud as well as NVIDIA’s H100 chip. And that’s for people, companies that are looking for a cloud vendor for AI processes.
So a huge number of announcements today. That $30 per user per month, though, that’s probably the headline number there. It helped to drive Microsoft stock higher when they announced similar pricing for their AI offering.
SEANA SMITH: So some excitement there. But Dan, it certainly is a busy day for tech. We also got some news out from Apple on its next product event. What can we expect there?
DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, September 12, that’s when Apple’s going to be having its next event. And they don’t say exactly what it is. But if it’s in September and it’s from Apple, it’s probably from the new iPhone. So you can expect the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro lines to be announced there as well as the next Apple Watch. That’s the Series 9. Perhaps even an Apple Watch Ultra second-generation product.
The big thing with the 15 and 15 Pro lines is we’re going to kiss the lightning cable goodbye. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, we’re going to be getting USB-C across the board. And that’s part of an EU mandate saying that all electronics manufacturers that can use USB-C should. Part of that is because they want to crack down on the number of cables that people have floating around and just reduce waste overall.
So it’ll be a benefit for users because, look, your MacBook probably already has a USB-C. Your Windows laptop certainly has USB-C. And it’ll be– everything will be able to charge and work easy with each other.
They’re also going to increase the screen size on the Pros by using a new type of display technology. The regular 15s will get a dynamic island upgraded processors across the board. And as for those watches, the Apple Watch will now get a new chip as well for better performance overall.
AKIKO FUJITA: OK. Dan booking that flight to Cupertino. September 12, we marked it on our calendars Thanks so much for that.
