Google last week unpacked a host of critical new artificial intelligence (AI) advancements, particularly in the areas around generative AI such as language analysis, text-to-video, and assisted writing capabilities. Along with other enticing developments around ethical AI, Google revealed it would be working on AI in at least one thousand languages going forward. At the Google AI event held at the company's Pier 57 offices in New York City on November 2, the global technology titan highlighted areas of focus to include democratizing AI development pathways, "building for everyone" responsible, controlled models which can identify generative AI -- unsupervised artificial intelligence learning algorithms that can create new digital audio, text, imagery, video, or code -- along with advancing language translation, disaster management, and health AI. Google shared the first rendering of a video that shares both of the company's complementary text-to-video research approaches -- Imagen Video and Phenaki. The interest of global communities was piqued by the announcement that language abilities are being developed using AI for the world's one thousand most spoken languages, showcasing another major area of artificial intelligence focus as tech giants compete to dominate the internet's next battleground.

Google on Wednesday said it wanted to develop artificial intelligence using the world's one thousand most spoken languages as tech giants compete to dominate the internet's next battleground. Data is crucial to advances in AI, and Google and its big tech rivals want to tap information to help make products perform better and be more available to the widest possible audience. "Imagine a new internet user in Africa speaking Wolof... using their phone to ask where is the nearest pharmacy," said Johan Schalkwyk, a researcher at Google. Such situations "we take for granted," Schalkwyk told reporters, adding that languages were "not available to everyone in the world." According to Schalkwyk, there are more than 7,000 languages globally. However, Google only offers its translations for a little more than 130 of them.

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On-device machine learning algorithms afford plenty of advantages, namely low latency and availability -- because processing is performed locally as opposed to remotely on a server, connectivity has no bearing on performance. Google sees the wisdom in this: It today announced that Gboard, its cross-platform virtual keyboard app, now uses an end-to-end recognizer to power American English speech input on Pixel smartphones. "This means no more network latency or spottiness -- the new recognizer is always available, even when you are offline," Johan Schalkwyk, a fellow on Google's Speech Team, wrote in a blog post. "The model works at the character level, so that as you speak, it outputs words character-by-character, just as if someone was typing out what you say in real-time, and exactly as you'd expect from a keyboard dictation system." It's more complicated than it sounds.

Most people on Earth can speak two or more languages, but voice-operated virtual assistants have always forced them to pick and use just one--at least until today. Google Assistant is now the first multilingual virtual assistant. Users can specify that they want listening done in two languages in the app's settings on their phone or Google Home smart speaker. Then, a person can call out requests or commands in either language. Yell "Hey Google, turn off the hallway light!" as you walk out the house, and darkness will fall.