Artificial intelligence and machine learning are crucial to Google and its parent company Alphabet. Recently promoted Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has been talking about an "AI-first world" since 2016, and the company uses the technology across many of its businesses, from search advertising to self-driving cars.

But regulators are expressing concern about the growing power and lack of understanding about how AI works and what it can do. The European Union is exploring new AI regulation, including a possible temporary ban on the use of facial recognition in public, and New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who chairs the House Oversight and Reform Committee, recently suggested that AI regulation could be on the way in the U.S., too. Pichai recently called for "clear-eyed" AI regulation amid a rise in fake videos and abuse of facial recognition technology.

Against this backdrop, the company held an event Tuesday to showcase the positive side of AI by showing some of the long-term projects the company is working on.

"Right now, one of the problems in machine learning is we tend to tackle each problem separately," said Jeff Dean, head of Google AI, at Google's San Francisco offices Tuesday. "These long arcs of research are really important to pick fundamental important problems and continue to make progress on them."

While most of Google's projects are still years out from broad use, Dean said they are important in moving Google products along.

Here's a sampling of some of the company's more speculative and long-term AI projects: