Google highlighted the impact of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools on the South African innovation landscape and business scenes at the AI in Action event held in Cape Town today.
The event, attended by various stakeholders in the tech ecosystem, business community, and media was an opportunity for Google to reaffirm its commitment to advancing Africa’s digital transformation journey through AI adoption.
Held under the theme “AI is Now,” Google used the opportunity to demonstrate how businesses, developers, and communities in South Africa can leverage AI to enhance productivity, ignite innovation, and tackle real-world challenges in a way that is responsible.
This year’s gathering aimed at showcasing how the fast growing AI industry is impacting the future of work, education, and commerce in South Africa. Practical demonstrations were used to show attendees how they can adopt AI solutions to unlock new opportunities, improve operational efficiency, and keep pace in a rapidly evolving global digital economy.
“At Google, we believe in the immense potential of AI to transform businesses while uplifting the economy, and significantly improve lives across South Africa,” stated Kabelo Makwane, Country Director for Google 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.
During the same event, Google unveiled a partnership with the UK based Raspberry Pi Foundation. The initiative will equip young learners across South Africa with foundational digital and AI literacy skills, through the Experience AI initiative.
The programme provides them with early exposure to the tools and knowledge they will need to thrive in the digital economy. The foundation has selected local NPC, Edunova, as the implementation agent across five provinces in South Africa. It aims to train 4 200 school teachers and reach more than 210 000learners.
“We are happy to partner with such a reputable company as Google on such an important project. We recognise the power of AI to change the world and are excited to play a part in spreading the skills that will ensure that our future generations can utilise the technology to better their lives,” Edunova SA lead Dietrich Baron said.
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 billion pieces 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.
