Google launches new open-source AI model Gemma

Google has released a new open artificial intelligence model Gemma, created with the same research and technology used to develop its flagship Gemini models.

The Alphabet-owned company has released two open models, Gemma 2B and 7B, that aim to assist developers and researchers in “building AI responsibly”.

While Gemini is a closed AI model that competes directly with Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the more lightweight Gemma, developed by Google DeepMind, is expected to work well for modest tasks such as basic chatbots or summarisation jobs. “[They] are capable of running directly on a developer laptop or desktop computer … surpass significantly larger models on key benchmarks while adhering to our rigorous standards for safe and responsible outputs,” said Tris Warkentin, director at Google DeepMind, and Jeanine Banks, vice president and general manager at Google’s Developer X team.

Q

When will Gemma be available?

A

Available from Wednesday, Gemma comes with a new generative AI toolkit that offers guidance and essential tools for creating safer applications.

Developers can access it through platforms such as Kaggle, Hugging Face, Nvidia’s NeMo and Google’s Vertex AI.

French-American company

Hugging Face is a collaboration platform for the global machine-learning community. It develops tools for building applications using AI and machine learning.

In January, it joined forces with Google Cloud to help the development of generative AI and machine learning.

What is Gemini?

Launched in December, Gemini is the first AI model to beat human experts on MMLU (Massive Multitask Language Understanding), one of the widely used methods to test the knowledge and problem-solving abilities of AI.

It was integrated with Google’s generative AI tool Bard and it can comprehend diverse tasks and generate code based on different inputs – aimed to provide problem-solving capabilities.

How safe is Gemma?

Google said Gemma is designed with its “AI principles at the forefront”. The company used automated techniques to filter out certain personal information and other sensitive data from training sets.

“To understand and reduce the risk … we conducted robust evaluations including manual red-teaming, automated adversarial testing, and assessments of model capabilities for dangerous activities,” Google said.

To attract more Gemma users, the company is also offering $300 in credits for first-time Google Cloud users.

Researchers can also apply for Google Cloud credits of up to $500,000 to accelerate their projects.

How big is the Gen AI market?

Investors have put more than $4.2 billion into generative AI start-ups in 2021 and 2022 through 215 deals after interest surged in 2019, recent data from CB Insights showed.

Globally, AI investments are projected to hit $200 billion by 2025, Goldman Sachs Economic Research said in August.

In September, Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute launched Falcon 180B – an advanced version of its flagship language model. In November, cloud company Amazon Web Services launched a generative AI tool specifically for businesses.