This week’s Google I/O Conference in California has seen some big news already; and it’s only been one day so far. Google CEO Sundar Pichai spoke at the key note to a rapturous crowd, showcasing the very best of what Google has to offer consumers in the future.

So far it appears that Google is placing an enormous focus on the continued development of artificial intelligence. With AI beginning to dominate discussion throughout the tech world it seems Google has grand plans to lead the tech industry.

Before the Day One keynote even began, Google announced that it will be rebranding the Google Research Division to Google AI.

This change is a clear indication of how much the company plans on investing in the coming months and years; with research and development in computer vision, language processing and neural networks all likely to receive massive investment.

Here are some of the most innovative ideas presented during yesterday’s keynote.

Google Maps Overhaul

Google Assistant appears to be coming to Google Maps and will be available on Android and iOS in the summer. This new addition will likely provide users with better recommendations and create a more personalised service. For some time now, the company has intended on creating a more personalised service for its Google Maps users; moving away from a simple route-planner to offering people suggestions on a myriad of local places such as restaurants, bars, banks and supermarkets.

The changes users will encounter will likely revolutionise they way people traverse streets in an unknown area, town or city around the globe. Complete integration of the camera, computer vision technology and Google Maps with Street View will have users thinking they’ve been drawn into the map as if by magic. Using Google Lens, the user will be able to identify buildings with their camera or identify text on signs.

AI-Assisted Google News

This is perhaps the most exciting announcement from Day One of the I/O Conference, as Google announced it will introduce AI technology into Google News.

The redesigned news app will, the company says, “allow users to keep up with the news they care about, understand the full story, and enjoy and support publishers they trust.”

For Google, this is an opportunity to redefine how we find our news, offering a personalised selection of news-sources for users to peruse. Users will now decide what news they read or watch based on their own personal preferences. Guardian readers, for example, will receive Guardian content or similarly-styled news, and vice-versa for those who prefer other publications.

The new app will combine elements found in Google’s Digital Magazine App, Youtube and Newsstand, while also introducing new features such as ‘newscasts’ and ‘full coverage’. Essentially, if you want a broader spectrum of news coverage, you’ll have the chance to access it.

These changes come at a time when Apple is said to be preparing to bring out its’ own premium news subscription service. It also arrives during a tumultuous time for Facebook, which in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal is dealing with serious concerns among users over its’ role in the media industry. Fake news has been an issue plaguing Facebook for several months now, however the data collection methods the company employs raises questions around the ranking of news content on the site.

Google Photos Gets an AI Boost

Google Photos is arguably the best photo editing tools available on the market currently, allowing users to create collages, movies and personalised photos. However, the company plans to further improve its’ AI-powered features that will see brightness correction and glare issues rectified, as well as suggesting rotations.

As an already popular editing tool, this move will likely see a torrent of new users jumping onto the app to edit or modify their photo collections. This isn’t just a great app for users, however, as the app itself is allowing Google to fine tune and improve the user experience and tools. With every photo that is uploaded onto the the app comes more data, thus helping the company get increasingly better at image recognition.

Ultimately, this is a move that will improve the experience of users and provide the company with an invaluable opportunity to cultivate its technology.

As part of the Google Photos overhaul, the introduction of a colourise tool will also be available in due course. This will allow users to import black and white photos and turn them into fully colourised images.

The inspiration behind this comes from the Photoscan app, which Google realised people were using old family photos to colourise. The tool will utilise groundbreaking neural network technology to establish what colours work best with the photograph – Turning the sky blue or grass green, for example.

The stumbling block for the tool comes in the finer details, however. Skin tone and hair colour will likely be a trickier issue for Photoscan to tackle and as such Google says it isn’t launching the feature until its abilities are more finely tuned.