Google has announced a new machine learning platform for developers at its NEXT Google Cloud Platform user conference. Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman, explained that Google believes machine learning is "what's next."

Machine Learning Models

Credit: Google

There are two parts to Google’s Cloud Machine Learning platform. The first allows developers to build machine learning models based on their own data stored in tools such as Google Cloud Dataflow, Google BigQuery, Google Cloud Dataproc, Google Cloud Storage, and Google Cloud Datalab.

The pre-trained models include existing APIs like the Google Translate API and Cloud Vision API, but also new services like the Google Cloud Speech API.

“Cloud Machine Learning will take care of everything from data ingestion through to prediction,” the company says. “The result: now any application can take advantage of the same deep learning techniques that power many of Google’s services.”

Adapting and Improving

With the introduction of this new platform, Google will make it easier for developers to use some of the machine learning smarts Google already uses. During the conference, Google representatives explained that the company is open-sourcing tools such as Tensorflow to allow the community to take its internal tools, adapt them for their own uses, and improve them.

“Major Google applications use Cloud Machine Learning, including Photos (image search), the Google app (voice search), Translate and Inbox (Smart Reply),” the company says. “Our platform is now available as a cloud service to bring unmatched scale and speed to your business applications.”

The service is now available in limited preview.


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