Google boots up its new machine learning tool

24 Mar 2016

Google has launched a new machine learning platform and, to a degree, it’s available for developers to play around with.

Creatively called ‘Cloud Machine Learning’, Google’s new tool has been launched by Alphabet chairperson Eric Schmidt in a limited preview capacity, allowing developers to build their own tools, form their own data, or work off a pre-trained model.

Schmidt says machine learning is “what’s next”, according to TechCrunch, announcing the new platform at the company’s NEXT 2016 event yesterday.

The software behind Cloud Machine Learning helps manage things like Google’s image and voice search tools, Google Translate and Inbox, with the company saying this release will bring “unmatched scale and speed” to developers’ apps.

It means developers can take these Google tools and build them into their own APIs, although you’ll need quite a lot of juice if you are going to work on a pre-trained Cloud Machine Learning model.

Cloud Dataproc, Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark have been generally available to play around with recently, with Google adding BigQuery to the mix now, too.

“We’re on a journey to create applications that can see, hear and understand the world around them,” explains Google’s Fausto Ibarra.

“Some of the biggest brands in the world, like Spotify, Atomic Fiction and Khan Academy, are using our big data services. We look forward to seeing the innovative ways you’ll use these new products.”

Main Google sign image via Ken Wolter/Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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