▲Kyungsoon Eom, Google Cloud Customer Engineering Director

Bard, performance improvements based on user feedback
The Ministry of Science and ICT and Google Launch Development Cooperation at "AI Week."

Google's AI chatbot, Bard, will be available in 180 countries and speak 40 languages. The Ministry of Science and ICT has pledged to collaborate on talent development and research and development based on Google's AI capabilities.

At the 'AI Week 2023' event, jointly held by the Ministry of Science and ICT and Google at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas in Samseong-dong from July 13 to 15, Google announced that it had developed a multilingual model for 'Bard'.

Google, which began adding AI capabilities to its products and services in 2017, launched Bard, a generative AI-powered assistant, in March. Korean and Japanese versions of Bard were released in May. Choi Hyun-jung, Google's Bard Director, said, "Bard is continuously learning and improving its capabilities to facilitate everyday communication."

Bard is evolving based on the model of 'PaLM2', which is Google's original technology LLM (Large-Scale Language Model). Director Choi emphasized that "Bard is continuously improving based on 'RLHF', which means preferences based on feedback from actual users."

Bard is increasingly handling complex advisory tasks, from sentence-based tasks to coding and writing. Director Choi stated, "In Korea, in particular, we've seen a rise in demand for tasks like foreign language-based interviews and document writing." He added, "We will soon add the ability to understand images and add them to responses."

Other newly added Bard features include improvements primarily for user convenience, such as the ability to hear voice replies, receive multiple answer options, and support for quick Google searches.

On the second day of 'AI Week 2023', Google also shared the latest service updates revealed at 'Google I/O 2023', Google's annual developer event.

Google Play Managing Director Kiran Mani highlighted features such as secure monetization for developers, faster store listing information, and AI-powered easy-to-manage management. Google stated, "By platforming developers across the entire development cycle, we will support the creation and enhancement of a successful ecosystem, from development to security and promotion."

Kyungsoon Eom, Director of Customer Engineering at Google Cloud, introduced Google Cloud's AI portfolio, which supports the application of AI to businesses. Based on Vertex AI, Gen AI, and others, developers can quickly create and deploy apps.

Google is expanding its enterprise reach, including its generative AI-powered Duet AI platform within Workspace. By applying generative AI to Google Mail, Calendar, Google Meet, and Chat, it supports convenient features in hybrid work environments. The company announced plans to further enhance performance by introducing NVIDIA's H100 GPU at the end of August.

Ministry of Science and ICT and Google Join Forces to Strengthen AI Talent Development

▲AI Week 2023 event site

This event was attended by approximately 60 AI experts representing Korea and Google, as well as over 25 domestic companies. At the event, the Ministry of Science and ICT and Google agreed to expand their talent development and research and development cooperation programs.

To this end, Google is expanding the number of trainees for its "Machine Learning Bootcamp" program in Korea from 200 to 500 per year. Beginning this year, training for non-majors will also be offered in Korean.

Additionally, we train over 1,000 professionals annually through our 'Startup School' program for students and aspiring entrepreneurs. Google has selected seven outstanding AI researchers in Korea and will support their research projects on optimizing ML models.

To strengthen collaboration in R&D, we will hold and regularly hold academic exchange meetings related to AI research. These meetings will facilitate discussions on joint research. This is expected to be an opportunity for Korea's AI Innovation Hub and Google's top experts to participate together, share Google's latest AI technology, and promote the excellent technological capabilities of domestic researchers.

Meanwhile, on the 15th, the last day of the event, Google and Korean startups will hold a job fair for college students interested in working at artificial intelligence companies.

“AI technology is evolving, and Korea is at the forefront,” said Yossi Matthias, VP of Engineering and Research at Google. “Google, together with the Ministry of Science and ICT, will fully support Korea’s strengthening of its AI research capabilities by expanding joint research opportunities between Google engineers and domestic researchers and strengthening talent development.”

Minister of Science and ICT Lee Jong-ho asserted, "In order for Korea to take the lead in the global market, which is becoming increasingly competitive due to the rise of hyper-large AI, it is important for domestic companies to make efforts to spread their own hyper-large AI models, as well as to improve technological capabilities and expand overseas through cooperation with global companies such as Google."

He said, "I hope that this event will serve as an opportunity to expand our collaboration with Google, a global leader in the AI field, to widely spread the large-scale AI-based application services of our promising small and medium-sized enterprises and startups to the global market, and to further strengthen our AI capabilities by promoting joint research with domestic researchers."