Google Allows Developers to Use Its Machine Learning Platform

Google’s Cloud Machine Learning platform, which is utilized by a number of applications including Google Photos, Translate and Inbox has been made available for use by developers today. The announcement was made by Alphabet’s Chairman, Eric Schmidt at NEXT 2016, where he explained that machine learning was “what’s next”.

This move will give developers the chance to leverage the power that Google currently makes use of every day in their own apps.  These powerful machine learning tools will be available to use through a number of easy-to-use REST APIs according to Fausto Ibarra, Google’s director of product management. He went on to state that “Cloud Machine Learning will take machine learning mainstream, giving data scientists and developers a way to build a new class of intelligent applications.”

The Cloud Machine Learning platform APIs initially on offer by Google include translation, photo, and speech recognition tools which power Google Now, Google Photos, voice recognition in Google Search and many other systems.

This release by Google makes them the third major company to roll out a machine learning platform for developers, with Microsoft’s Azure platform releasing in 2015 and Amazon Web Services including machine learning since 2015. With Google declaring that machine learning is set to be the next big thing in computing, it may not be too long before we see our everyday apps getting even smarter, as developers benefit from Google’s platform and Google in turn benefit from its usage allowing furthering development. It may only be in developer preview for now, but I am sure that many app developers, both old and new, will be jumping at the chance to put these cutting edge tools to use.