Google AI in Action Jhb Highlights

The second leg of Google’s AI in Action took place in Johannesburg early in August. It showcased the impact of Google’s AI tools in South Africa’s innovation and business landscapes.

The event drew a diverse audience of tech stakeholders, business leaders, and media, serving as a strategic platform for Google to reaffirm its commitment to advancing Africa’s digital transformation through AI adoption.

Under the theme “AI is Now,” Google showcased how businesses, developers, and communities in South Africa can responsibly leverage AI to enhance productivity, drive innovation, and address real-world challenges.

The event highlighted the impact of the AI industry on South Africa’s future of work, education, and commerce. Attendees gained insights into adopting AI solutions to unlock new opportunities, improve efficiency, and maintain competitiveness in the rapidly evolving global digital economy.

Kabelo Makwane, Country Director for Google South Africa says it believes in the immense potential of AI to transform businesses while uplifting the economy, and improve lives across South Africa.

“We are dedicated to progressing AI responsibly and driving growth through partnerships and collaborations, ensuring that AI, as a transformative technology, is not only accessible, but also truly inclusive and responsible in attempting to address local and global challenges,” he added.

At the event, IDInsight‘s ‘Ask-A-Question‘, developed in partnership with Reach Digital Health, was unveiled. This solution that benefits from Google.org’s support is a natural language chatbot that dramatically reduces barriers to critical health information for new and expectant mothers.

Leveraging Google Cloud and a fine-tuned Gemma model, “Ask-A-Question” is already making a tangible difference, answering 40,000 to 60,000 questions per month in South Africa on the MomConnect platform. This highlights the profound real-world impact of AI in delivering essential support where it’s needed most.

“Google.org’s incredible support was instrumental in bringing our ‘Ask-A-Question’ chatbot to life. This partnership has already allowed us to dramatically reduce barriers to critical health information for new and expectant mothers across South Africa, and we believe this is just the beginning of how we will integrate AI’s vast potential,” said Daniel Futerman, Head of Engineering at Reach Digital Health.

Recap: Minister Solly Malatsi’s speech at the Google in AI in Action event can be found here.

Other announcements at the event

NotebookLM available in isiZulu & Afrikaans

AI-powered research and summarisation tool, NotebookLM is now available in local South African languages, including isiZulu and Afrikaans. The tool enables students to summarise study materials in their own language or a small business owner to review market insights in Afrikaans, bridging language and understanding – gaps to ensure AI works for South Africa’s diverse linguistic communities. This marks a significant step forward in fostering inclusive local content creation and consumption.

SynthID Detector

Another milestone at the event was the  launch of the SynthID Detector, a public tool that helps users identify content that has been watermarked with SynthID. With over 10 billionpieces of content already watermarked, this tool offers a new layer of transparency and trust, especially for journalists, researchers, and anyone navigating the fast-evolving digital information landscape.