Choose a natural language processing function

This document provides a comparison of the natural language processing functions available in BigQuery ML, which are ML.GENERATE_TEXT, ML.TRANSLATE, and ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT.

ML.GENERATE_TEXT can do tasks that the other two functions can do as well, as shown in the following image:

Diagram showing common workflows for remote models that use Vertex AI models or Cloud AI services.

You can use the information in this document to help you decide which function to use in cases where the functions have overlapping capabilities.

At a high level, the difference between these functions is as follows:

  • ML.GENERATE_TEXT is a good choice for performing customized natural language processing (NLP) tasks at a lower cost. This function offers more language support, faster throughput, and model tuning capability, and also works with multimodal models.
  • ML.TRANSLATE is a good choice for performing translation-specific NLP tasks where you need to support a high rate of queries per minute.
  • ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT is a good choice for performing NLP tasks supported by the Cloud Natural Language API.

Supported models

Supported models are as follows:

Supported tasks

Supported tasks are as follows:

  • ML.GENERATE_TEXT: you can perform any NLP task. What task the model performs is based on the prompt you specify. For example, to perform a question answering task, you could provide a prompt similar to CONCAT("What are the key concepts in the following article?: ", article_text). You can also provide context as part of the prompt. For example, CONCAT("context: Only output 'yes' or 'no' to the following question: ", question).

  • ML.TRANSLATE: you can perform the following tasks:

  • ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT: you can perform the following tasks:

Data context

When choosing what function to use, consider whether your data can be analyzed in isolation, or whether it requires additional context to support the analysis. If your data requires additional context, using ML.GENERATE_TEXT with a Vertex AI model is a better choice, as those models allow you to provide context as part of the prompt you submit. Keep in mind that providing additional context as input increases token count and cost.

If your data can be analyzed without other context being considered by the model—for example, translating a string of text without knowing why it was written, then using ML.TRANSLATE or ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT might be a better choice, provided that the task you want to perform is supported.

Output structure

ML.GENERATE_TEXT consistently returns results in the ml_generate_text_llm_result output column. You can also use your prompt to define your output structure. For example, you can instruct the model to return your result as JSON with custom parent and child fields, and provide an example of how to produce this result.

ML.TRANSLATE and ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT produce the same output for a given task type for each successful call to the API. Additionally, the output from these functions includes additional metadata about their results. For example, ML.TRANSLATE output includes information about the input language, and ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT output includes information about the magnitude of the sentiment for sentiment analysis tasks. Generating this metadata is possible with the Vertex AI models, but this requires significant prompt engineering, and isn't likely to provide the same granularity.

Pricing

Pricing is as follows:

Model training

Custom training support is as follows:

  • ML.GENERATE_TEXT: supervised tuning is supported for some models.
  • ML.TRANSLATE: custom training isn't supported.
  • ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT: custom training isn't supported.

Multimodality

Multimodality support is as follows:

  • ML.GENERATE_TEXT: supports text and text + image input.
  • ML.TRANSLATE: supports text input.
  • ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT: supports text input.

Queries per minute (QPM) limit

QPM limits are as follows:

Token limit

Token limits are as follows:

Supported languages

Supported languages are as follows:

  • ML.GENERATE_TEXT: supports Generative AI for Vertex AI languages.
  • ML.TRANSLATE: supports Cloud Translation API languages.
  • ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT: supports Cloud Natural Language API languages.

Region availability

Region availability is as follows:

  • ML.GENERATE_TEXT: available in all Generative AI for Vertex AI regions.
  • ML.TRANSLATE: available in the EU and US multi-regions.
  • ML.UNDERSTAND_TEXT: available in the EU and US multi-regions.