During a virtual keynote at Google I/O 2021, Google’s developer conference, Google Cloud has launched Vertex AI, a fully managed cloud platform that simplifies the deployment and maintenance of machine learning models. It’s designed to help companies to accelerate the deployment and maintenance of AI models, Google says, by requiring nearly 80% fewer lines of code to train a model versus competitive platforms.
Vertex offers access to the MLOps toolkit internally at Google for computer vision, language, conversation, and structured data workloads. MLOps, a compound of machine learning and information technology operations, is a newer discipline involving collaboration between data scientists and IT professionals to productize machine learning algorithms. “Data scientists have a big challenge about manually piecing ML point solutions, creating a lag time in model development and experimentation, resulting in very few models making it into production. To tackle these challenges, Vertex AI brings together the Google Cloud services for building ML under one unified UI and API, to simplify the process of building, training, and deploying machine learning models at scale” Craig Wiley, the director of product management for Google Cloud’s AI Platform states.
To increases the rate of experimentation, the service is also integrated with Vertex Vizier, Google’s AI optimizer that can automatically tune hyperparameters in machine learning models. This greatly reduces the time it takes to tune a model and allows engineers to run more experiments and do so faster.
Companies that have started to use Vertex AI have been getting results as well. ModiFace, a part of L’Oréal, is a global market leader in augmented reality and artificial intelligence for the beauty industry. ModiFace creates new services for consumers to try beauty products such as hair color, makeup, and nail color, virtually in real-time. ModiFace is using the Vertex AI platform to train its AI models for all of its new services. For example, ModiFace’s skin diagnostic is trained on thousands of images from L’Oréal’s Research & Innovation, the company’s dedicated research arm. Bringing together L’Oréal’s scientific research combined with ModiFace’s AI algorithm, this service allows people to obtain a highly precise tailor-made skincare routine. “We provide an immersive and personalized experience for people to purchase with confidence whether it’s a virtual try-on at web check out, or helping to understand what brand product is right for each individual,” said Jeff Houghton, chief operating officer at ModiFace, part of L’Oréal. “With more and more of our users looking for information at home, on their phone, or at any other touchpoint, Vertex AI allowed us to create technology that is incredibly close to actually trying the product in real life.”
Wiley says that Vertex will continue to evolve in response to customer feedback. “Vertex offers a series of tools dedicated specifically to data scientists, machine learning professionals, and developers who want to efficiently deploy their machine learning. I would expect further development an innovation for that kind of data scientist customer would exist under the Vertex brand,” he said.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilkerkoksal/2021/05/22/google-cloud-launches-vertex-ai-a-machine-learning-platform/
