Google announced the opening of its PaLM API, allowing developers to use one of its most advanced AI language models: PaLM. The company has also unveiled some artificial intelligence enterprise tools that it says will help companies “generate content from simple natural language prompts such as text, images, code, video, audio, and more.”
PaLM is a large language model (LLM), similar to the GPT series developed by OpenAI or the LLaMA series developed by Meta. Google first announced PaLM in April 2022. Like other LLMs, PaLM is a flexible and versatile system that can perform a variety of text generation and editing tasks. For example, you can train PaLM to be a conversational chatbot (like ChatGPT), or use it for tasks like text summarization or writing code.
To make it easier for developers to train PaLM to perform specific tasks, Google has also launched a new application: MakerSuite. “With MakerSuite, you can iterate on cues, augment your datasets with synthetic data, and easily tune custom models,” the company said in a press release. Google says this kind of fine-tuning can be done in the browser — while the computationally intensive training and deployment is handled by Google Cloud.
In addition to launching the PaLM API, Google has expanded its Vertex AI platform support for generative AI techniques. The platform is designed to help businesses train and deploy machine learning models. The company says Vertex will be able to use more models built by Google’s research arm and its AI subsidiary DeepMind, and will also be able to plug into open source and third-party systems in the future.
Finally, Google also unveiled a new platform called the Generative AI App Builder. The platform, the company says, “allows developers to quickly roll out new experiences, including bots, chat interfaces, custom search engines, digital assistants, and more. Developers can access Google’s underlying model through an API and use out-of-the-box templates to initiate the creation of generative applications in minutes or hours.”
All of the above are enterprise-centric, but this is also a major move by Google to put more AI tools in the hands of more companies, and the PaLM API will drive new AI developments in 2023.
