Get Started with Vector Search using Vertex AI
TLDRThis video introduces vector search, highlighting its importance in AI/ML services and its applications in businesses for various types of content, such as products and user activities. It explains the concept of embeddings and how they differ from traditional databases, offering a more nuanced way to organize and search for content. The video showcases Google's ScaNN algorithm and its role in enabling fast, scalable vector search, and outlines how Google Cloud Vertex AI Search allows developers to leverage this technology for building production-quality vector search services with ease and efficiency.
Takeaways
- 🔍 Vector search is an essential AI/ML technology used in various services like Google Search and YouTube.
- 📈 It is becoming increasingly important for businesses to adopt vector search for search and recommendation systems.
- 🌐 Google uses vector search to organize data and provide relevant search results and recommendations to users.
- 🛠️ Vector search relies on 'embeddings', a data structure representing the meaning of content in a multi-dimensional space.
- 📊 Traditional databases use structured data, whereas vector search uses embeddings to capture subtle differences in content.
- 🚀 In the age of generative AI, vector search plays a crucial role in multimodal search, like finding products by analyzing images.
- 🌟 Google's ScaNN algorithm is a highly efficient and scalable solution for vector search, foundational to many Google services.
- 🛠️ Google Cloud Vertex AI Search allows developers to leverage ScaNN for building production-ready vector search services.
- 🔧 It integrates with Google Cloud Services for a seamless MLOps pipeline from data extraction to embedding search.
- 🏢 Enterprises can use vector search to provide semantic search and significantly enhance user experience for item exploration.
- 🌐 Mercari, a marketplace app, successfully implemented vector search technology to improve product recommendations.
Q & A
What is vector search and why is it important for businesses?
-Vector search is a technology that uses embeddings, which are vectors representing the meaning of content, to quickly find and recommend relevant items based on their semantic similarity rather than just keywords. It's important for businesses because it enhances user experience by providing more relevant search results and recommendations, thus becoming a crucial component in AI/ML services.
How does Google utilize vector search in its services?
-Google uses vector search to organize data across its various services like Google Search, YouTube, and Google Play. This allows Google to provide search results and recommendations that are more relevant to users by understanding the semantic meaning behind the content.
What is the difference between traditional databases and vector search technology?
-Traditional databases organize data as structured or tabular data using simple keywords, labels, and categories. In contrast, vector search technology uses embeddings, which are high-dimensional vectors that capture the semantic meaning of content, allowing for more nuanced and accurate search and recommendation.
How do embeddings work in vector search?
-Embeddings in vector search are created by AI after training with specific content like text or images. They represent the content's meaning in a high-dimensional space, allowing AI to identify the location of each content and sort them into categories based on their semantic similarity.
What is the approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) technique and how does it benefit vector search?
-The approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) technique is a method used to speed up vector search by calculating the distance between embeddings and selecting the closer ones. It uses vector quantization to divide the embedding space into a tree structure, enabling fast and scalable search even with billions of embeddings.
What is ScaNN and how does it contribute to Google's services?
-ScaNN is an ANN algorithm developed by Google research that is considered one of the best in the industry for search and recommendation. It forms the foundation for major Google services like Google Search and YouTube, enabling them to provide fast and accurate search results and recommendations.
How does Google Cloud Vertex AI Search make use of ScaNN?
-Google Cloud Vertex AI Search is a fully-managed service that leverages Google's ScaNN-based technology to allow developers to easily add embeddings to an index and perform fast vector searches with a simple query. This service offers high performance, scalability, and reliability, making it suitable for enterprise-level applications.
What are the steps to build a production service using vector search in an enterprise?
-To build a production service using vector search, one must first obtain embeddings for each item, create an index on Vector Search with the embeddings, and then deploy the index on an index endpoint. This endpoint will receive queries and execute the vector search to return relevant results, such as similar items based on their meanings.
How does vector search enhance the user experience in comparison to keyword-based search?
-Vector search provides a semantic search experience by understanding the meaning behind the content rather than just matching keywords. This results in more accurate and relevant recommendations, leading to a better user experience as users can find items that truly match their interests and needs.
Can you provide an example of a company that successfully implemented vector search technology?
-Mercari, a popular marketplace app, is an example of a company that has successfully implemented vector search technology. They use it to show product recommendations and were able to build and deploy the system within a month with a single person, significantly reducing the time and cost for AI service development.
Outlines
🔍 Introduction to Vector Search and its Importance
This paragraph introduces the concept of vector search, highlighting its growing significance in businesses due to its ability to handle AI/ML services efficiently. It explains how vector search is utilized in everyday life through various Google services like Search, YouTube, and Google Play, and how it aids in providing relevant search results and recommendations. The explanation extends to the concept of multimodal search, which is made possible by combining vector search with generative AI models, allowing for searches based on item images rather than just text. The paragraph also contrasts traditional databases with vector search technology, emphasizing the use of 'embeddings' in AI-based services to capture the essence of content through a mapped space, as opposed to the structured data approach of traditional IT systems.
🚀 Google's ScaNN and its Role in Vector Search
This paragraph delves into the specifics of Google's ScaNN algorithm, which is considered a leading solution in the industry for vector search. It underscores ScaNN's foundational role in major Google services, such as Google Search and YouTube, and its contribution to Google's mission of organizing the world's information. The paragraph then transitions to discuss how Google Cloud developers can leverage ScaNN-based web search technology through Vertex AI Search, a fully-managed service that simplifies the process of adding embeddings to an index and performing fast vector searches. The summary also touches on the integration of Vertex AI Search with other Google Cloud Services, which facilitates the construction and operation of a production MLOps pipeline. Lastly, it provides a practical example of how vector search can be used in enterprises to recommend similar items, outlining the steps from obtaining embeddings to deploying the index and executing searches.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Vector Search
💡Embeddings
💡AI/ML Services
💡Generative AI
💡Multimodal Search
💡Approximate Nearest Neighbor (ANN)
💡ScaNN
💡Google Cloud Vertex AI
💡BigQuery
💡MLOps
💡Semantic Search
Highlights
Vector search is becoming increasingly important for businesses due to its role in AI/ML services.
Google uses vector search to organize data across its services like Google Search, YouTube, and Google Play.
Vector search can be applied to various types of content including products, users, conversations, music, videos, and IoT sensor data.
Generative AI and vector search can be combined for multimodal searches, such as finding products based on images rather than text.
Traditional databases use structured data, while AI organizes data using embeddings, a special type of vector.
Embedding space is a map of content's meaning, where AI can identify the location of each content.
Embeddings can have hundreds or thousands of dimensions to capture subtle differences in content.
Google's ScaNN algorithm is a highly efficient and scalable approach for vector search.
Google Cloud Vertex AI Search is a fully-managed service that leverages ScaNN for fast vector searches.
Vector search enables a new level of user experience by understanding the meaning behind content.
Google Cloud's integration with services like BigQuery and Vertex AI Embeddings API simplifies the MLOps pipeline.
Vector search can be used to show similar items to users based on semantic search rather than just keywords.
Mercari, a popular marketplace app, successfully implemented vector search technology for product recommendations.
Vector search is essential for creating production-ready services and enhancing user experience.
Google's infrastructure for vector search underpins major services and is now accessible to developers through Vertex AI.
Using vector search, items can be found by their meanings in milliseconds, transforming human-computer interaction.
Vector search services are crucial for businesses to stay competitive in the age of AI and data-driven operations.