Google unveiled Firebase Genkit designed to support Go and streamline the creation of AI-powered JavaScript and TypeScript applications.
At the Google I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google announced a new addition to its Firebase platform that will soon support Go and make it easier for developers to create AI-powered JavaScript and TypeScript applications.
Using the Apache 2.0 license, Firebase Genkit is an open-source platform that lets developers easily integrate AI into both new and old applications.
Many of the common generative AI use cases, such as content generation and summarization, text translation, and image production, are among the use cases for Genkit that the business is showcasing on Tuesday.
“Building and refining these features beyond a prototype is hard,” Google product manager Chris Gill and developer advocate Peter Friese stated in their statement on Tuesday. “Powerful large language models make AI-powered app features accessible.”
In order to swiftly develop and enhance these features, several of us are still working out how to implement them in production at scale and monitor their performance. Balancing stability and safety during the process further complicates the issue. It’s a fact that everyone could use some assistance.
Since Genkit employs the same methodologies as the other components of the Firebase toolchain, the Firebase team guarantees that developers will be able to utilize it immediately. They will be able to test their new features locally using Genkit and then use Google’s serverless platforms, such as Cloud Functions for Firebase and Google Cloud Run, to deploy their application.
Developers can add to Genkit as needed because it is open source, but it already supports a variety of open source applications from third parties out of the box. This implies that developers can use open models via Ollama on top of Google’s proprietary Gemini models, for instance.
In addition to Google Cloud Firestore, Genkit will support vector databases such as those found in Chrome, Pinecone, and PostgreSQL’s pgvector.
The team states that with its plugin architecture, “Genkit is also designed to be open to any and all models, vector stores, embedders, evaluators, and other components.”
Google also announces that Project IDX, its next-generation web-based integrated development environment, now available to the general public, will support Genkit’s developer UI out of the box.
The Firebase team also revealed support for SQL databases today via Firebase Data Connect, a new service fueled by Google Cloud SQL Postgres databases in addition to Genkit.
Another recent addition is Firebase App Hosting, which is the “next generation of serverless web hosting with Google, designed specifically for server-rendered web apps.” Firebase App Hosting, a serverless web hosting solution, will handle all aspects such as application development, content delivery network (CDN) management, and server-side rendering for developers.