Eyes on small biz: Google apps tap into Bengali, Tamil & Telugu

LAS VEGAS: Google has added Bengali, Tamil and Telugu, among 52 additional languages it has announced, to its ‘Workspace’ — a platform with 3 billion users comprising AI-powered apps like Gmail, Chat, Meet, Calendar, Drive and Docs.
The tech giant is seeing “India as a strong market with Workspace, both in consumer space as well as businesses”, Google Workspace VP and GM Aparna Pappu said at the Google Cloud Next ’24 conference here recently.
She also announced an AI-powered video creation app for work — Google Vids — to be launched in June in Google Workspace Labs, along with a slew of other new offerings.
“In our initial launch, we had supported Hindi. Of the 52 additional languages that we have launched and announced, we have Bengali, Tamil and Telugu in there as well. That’s because that’s where user interest is,” she added.
“We have been spending a lot of time understanding what small businesses mean in India. A team will be visiting India to find out aspects like what businesses need over there, does our road map match theirs,” she said.
“Vids is video, writing, production and editing assistant — all in one — and can work alongside Google’s other productivity tools like Docs, Sheets and Slides. People tell stories at work everyday, whether it’s HR onboarding new employees to the organisation’s mission, training team creating digital learning experiences or a sales person pitching a new client on the benefits of their offering. Now, everyone can be a great storyteller through video,” she said.
On the menace of fake videos especially in an election year, Aparna said: “One of the things that makes Workspace a great space to deploy AI is the key principle that the user is in charge. The user makes the decision. You take responsibility as an author and as a collaborator. Your name is associated with the document. That changes the nature of kind of stuff people create,” she said.
And, as govts across the world deliberate on introducing legislation to regulate technologies such as AI, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said the need to ensure that any policy introduced should be implementable technologically. “We are discussing the issue with govts including the US and countries in Europe and Latin America. We have always been open to policy and regulation models,” Kurian said, during a roundtable with mediapersons. “We need to ensure that whenever a policy is drawn up, it can actually be implemented technologically. Because all this is piece of software, and you would want to put a policy on there, that can be implemented on software,” Kurian said.
(This writer was in Las Vegas at the invitation of Google)