About
Hi, I’m Alex Bailey
I help small and medium-sized businesses adopt AI safely, drawing on 25 years of research and engineering, including almost two decades at Google.
My story
From building AI at global scale to making it work for SMEs
My career started in research at Canon Research Centre Europe, working on document intelligence, information retrieval and automatic summarisation, long before “generative AI” was a household term.
I then spent 19 years as a Senior Software Engineer at Google in Zurich. I built systems for Google Search and Maps, architected dialog management and internationalisation for Google Assistant, and most recently led core infrastructure for the Bard and Gemini launches, including the model release pipelines and configuration systems behind the Gemini model family.
Through all of this I saw how powerful AI can be, and how much care it takes to deploy it reliably and responsibly. Today I bring that experience to businesses that don’t have an AI department of their own. I help them cut through the hype, protect their data and invest in what really works.
Experience
Career highlights
2025 – today
Bailey AI Consulting GmbH
Wollerau, Switzerland
Founder & AI Consultant
- Helping SMEs adopt AI safely, from strategy and use-case definition to secure rollout and team training.
2006 – 2025
Google Switzerland GmbH
Zurich
Senior Software Engineer
- Led core infrastructure for the Bard/Gemini launches to 100M+ users, including model release pipelines and configuration systems for the Gemini model family.
- Architected features for Google Assistant, including dialog management and internationalisation across 20+ locales.
- Built internal systems for Google Search and Google Maps.
2001 – 2006
Canon Research Centre Europe
United Kingdom
Researcher
- R&D in document intelligence and information retrieval, including statistical analysis and automatic summarisation.
Roles & affiliations
Where else you’ll find me
Podcast · Tech and Thrive
25 years of AI, and launching Bard in 100 days
We go back through 25 years of AI, from perceptrons, handwritten digits and the AI winters to deep learning and the transformer paper that came out of Google. I describe what happened inside Google when ChatGPT took off, why OpenAI could move faster, and how my team launched Bard in 100 days. Kiana, who started studying AI ten weeks before ChatGPT came out, compares that history with how she learns AI today.
Let’s talk about your AI plans
Tell me a little about your company and what you’d like to achieve. The first conversation is free and without obligation.