Google makes its machine learning platform available to developers

Machine learning powers features like the Google app’s speech recognition and the smart reply feature in the Inbox app, and Google sees the technology as the future of computing. “Cloud Machine Learning will take machine learning mainstream, giving data scientists and developers a way to build a new class of intelligent applications,” Fausto Ibarra, Google’s director of product management wrote in a blog post. “It provides access to the same technologies that power Google Now, Google Photos, and voice recognition in Google Search as easy to use REST APIs.”

Developers will have the opportunity to build Google’s translation, photo, and speech recognition APIs into their own apps utilizing the Cloud Machine Learning platform moving forward. But Google isn’t the first major company to introduce a machine learning platform, following in the footsteps of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services who launched their own platforms in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

With three of the biggest cloud platforms pushing machine learning, it’s only a matter of time before all our apps get a lot smarter. Google Cloud Machine Learning is available in a limited preview for developers now.