Google's head of product on generative AI strategy

As one of the top cloud providers, Google Cloud also stands at the forefront of the generative AI market.

Over the past two years, Google has been enmeshed in a push and pull with its chief competitors -- AWS, Microsoft and OpenAI -- in the race to dominate generative AI.

Google has introduced a slate of new generative AI products in the past year, including its main proprietary large language model, Gemini, and the Vertex AI Model Garden. Last week, it also debuted Audio Overview, which turns documents into audio discussions.

The tech giant has also faced criticism that it might be falling behind on generative AI challenges, such as the malfunctioning of its initial image generator.

Part of Google's strategy with generative AI is not only providing the technology through its own LLMs and those of many other vendors in the Model Garden, but also constantly advancing generative AI, said Warren Barkley, head of product at Google Cloud for Vertex AI, GenAI and machine learning, on the Targeting AI podcast from TechTarget Editorial.

"A lot of what we did in the early days, and we continue to do now is ... make it easy for people to go to the next generation and continue to move forward," Barkley said. "The models that we built 18 months ago are a shadow of the things that we have today. And so, making sure that you have ways for people to upgrade and continue to get that innovation is a big part of some of the things that we had to change."

The models that we built 18 months ago are a shadow of the things that we have today.

Google is also focused on helping customers choose the right models for their particular applications. The Model Garden offers more than 100 closed and open models.

"One thing that our most sophisticated customers are struggling with is how to evaluate models," Barkley said.

To help customers choose, Google recently introduced some evaluation tools that enable users to put in a prompt and compare the way different models respond.

The vendor is also working on AI reasoning techniques and sees that as moving the generative AI market forward.

Esther Ajao is a TechTarget Editorial news writer and podcast host covering artificial intelligence software and systems. Shaun Sutner is senior news director for TechTarget Editorial's information management team, driving coverage of artificial intelligence, unified communications, analytics and data management technologies. Together, they host the Targeting AI podcast series.