This morning, Google laid out its ambitious vision for the future, and a series of spectacular Google products that will take us there. At its I/O developer conference, the company unveiled a series of new products centered around the company's core competency: Unrivaled search and machine intelligence systems. Unlike earlier years, Google's big reveals were previews -- products launching "later this year" -- not immediate launches. And the most significant announcements -- personal assistant tech and smart messaging apps -- are products that Google rivals Amazon, Apple and Facebook already have out in the market. It's a sign that Google feels confident it can ship these products that are packed, in theory, with impressive, cutting-edge AI. "We want to talk to you a little bit about the future," CEO Sundar Pichai said at the onset of the keynote.

After falling behind to tech rivals on mobile messaging, Google is jumping back in. At its I/O developer conference, Google introduced a new app called Allo that incorporates its personal assistant and artificial intelligence tech into the app. "Given our expertise in machine learning, we wanted to approach this core use case from a new perspective," CEO Sundar Pichai said onstage introducing the project. Allo's key feature is having Google's intelligence baked in -- its search-based assistant as well as its "smart reply" feature from Google inbox. "Allo uses machine learning to suggest replies on the fly, anticipating what you might want to say next," Erik Kay, a Google engineering manager, said onstage.

Google has begun to build its own custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip called tensor processing units (TPUs), Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said today at the Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California. The name is inspired by Google's TensorFlow open source deep learning framework. But the technology is one of a kind -- something that makes sense only at Google scale. These TPUs were used in the AlphaGo artificial intelligence (AI) powered Go player that beat top-ranked Go player Lee Sedol, Pichai said. It also works inside Google search and Google Street View.

From virtual reality to a new smart-home speaker, Google is showing off just how pervasive it has become even as it's squeezed by its biggest competitors--Facebook, Apple and Amazon. Google showed off a VR system called Daydream, along with plans for headsets that will compete with Facebook's Oculus Rift. In a jab at Amazon, the company announced Google Home, an Internet-connected speaker that listens for your voice commands to play music or control lights and thermostats in the home. It is reminiscent of Amazon's Echo and will be available later this year for a yet-unannounced price. In an attempt to outshine Apple, Google is also adding features to its Android operating system, including the ability to run apps without actually installing apps.

Google I/O was full of announcements about upcoming products and enhancements. We're in a seminal moment, said Google chief executive (CEO) Sundar Pichai kicking off the company's annual I/O Conference in San Francisco. Looking back at the past 17(?!) years, Pichai discussed Google's evolution to the live audience of 7,000. As technology gets more sophisticated, he sees artificial intelligence (AI) playing a huge role in the company's next 17 years. "Leveraging our state-of-the-art capabilities in machine learning and AI, we truly want to take the next step in being more assistive to our user. Today, we are announcing the Google Assistant," said Pichai, one of the only people in the world who's allowed to use the "L" word on Search Engine Watch.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gaining momentum across industries with the help of companies such as IBM, Google, and Microsoft. McKinsey & Company estimates that as much as 45% of the tasks currently performed by people can be automated using current technologies -- not only low-level rote tasks, but high-level knowledge work as well. "Our point of view is that there is no function, no industry, almost no role that won't potentially be affected by this set of technologies -- not just every occupation, but every activity within each occupation," said Michael Chui, a partner with McKinsey Global Institute, in an interview. "It's not just automating the labor that's being done, but the work people do will have to change as well. Understanding how to take advantage of these technologies is going to be critically important."

Google showed off a VR system called Daydream, along with plans for headsets that will compete with Facebook's Oculus Rift. In a jab at Amazon, the company announced Google Home, an Internet-connected speaker that listens for your voice commands to play music or control lights and thermostats in the home. It is reminiscent of Amazon's Echo and will be available later this year for a yet-unannounced price. In an attempt to outshine Apple, Google is also adding features to its Android operating system, including the ability to run apps without actually installing apps. That's perhaps the one truly new thing Google announced Wednesday. It is Google's answer to the pain of installing phone apps you know you'll use just once or twice, for shopping or booking a parking spot, for example.

Mountain View (United States) (AFP) - Google on Wednesday unveiled a virtual home assistant device that brings together the Internet titan's strengths to challenge Amazon Echo. Google Home, about the size of a stout vase, will hit the market later this year, vice president of product management Mario Queiroz promised at the opening of the Internet giant's annual developers conference in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View. Home devices will incorporate new Google virtual assistant software introduced by chief executive Sundar Pichai. "Our ability to do conversational understanding is far ahead of what other virtual assistants can do," Pichai told a packed audience at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, a venue known more for concerts than for gatherings of developers. "We are an order of magnitude ahead of everyone else."

Hallucinatory image created with Dreamscope app by the author. Google engineers discovered this technique by reversing image recognition neural networks trained on dogs. Something went very wrong with one of Google's neural networks. It was designed for a simple task: identify dogs in photos. But a curious developer reversed the algorithm and it began to hallucinate dogs where there were none before.

If there was a theme to Google's 2016 developers conference, I/O, it was everything you've seen before -- but smarter. More than 7,000 software developers packed the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, Calif., on Wednesday to hear Google executives talk about products and features coming to consumers and the developer community. With nearly half the amphitheater exposed to sunlight, the tech giant handed out free sunglasses and sunscreen to attendees, who supplemented with their own caps and parasols. A few developers covered the tops of their heads with Google t-shirts and bandanas. The event had been held in San Francisco's all-indoor Moscone Center for the last 10 years, but Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told the audience that I/O was breaking tradition to signal new beginnings (if not new tan lines).