Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ll know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is easily one of the most talked about tech inventions of recent times after the release of ChatGPT, a language model that can generate realistic human-like text.
When the computer program began gaining popularity across the globe, eyebrows were raised especially by companies including Google. The behemoth tech company saw OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a looming threat to its business, and to tackle this threat, Google is ready to showcase more than 20 AI projects in 2023.
According to The New York Times, Larry Page and Sergey Brin — founders of Google – have had multiple meetings with some of its company executives regarding ChatGPT and how the AI platform could threaten its success as arguably the biggest search engine currently available.
Google’s concern about the effects of AI is one of the reasons it recently cut off 12,000 jobs. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also declared a “code red,” at the firm by pulling teams off existing projects and having them focus on building and prioritising AI products instead.
Google vs ChatGPT
D. Sivakumar, former Google research director stated, “This is a moment of significant vulnerability for Google. ChatGPT has put a stake in the ground, saying, ‘Here’s what a compelling new search experience could look like.’”
Google is now determined to make significant changes to its apps across all platforms to meet user demands by not only unveiling more than 29 new AI products but also showcasing a version of its search engine with chatbot features later this year, The New York Times reported.
The tech company’s upcoming products that are currently in development are reportedly for developers and consumers, including a tool that makes it easier to build apps for Android devices called Colab Plus Android Studio.
In response to the looming threat by AI platforms and specifically ChatGPT, Microsoft, unlike Google has seemingly taken the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ route by investing $10 billion into the AI platform. Google, however, must impress and captivate users with its forthcoming AI products or risk losing the No.1 search engine spot to an AI language model.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
