Competing chatbot ChatGPT knocked Google out of its rut. The founders, who left three years ago, had to resume work. Google is now developing more than 20 projects related to neural networks.
Last month, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, held several meetings with company executives. The topic: a rival's new chatbot, a smart neural network that looks like it could become the first noticeable threat to Google's $149 billion search business.
Page and Brin, who haven't spent much time at Google since leaving their day-to-day roles at the company in 2019, have begun a review of Google's artificial intelligence product strategy, according to New York Times insiders. They approved plans and suggested ideas for adding more chatbot functionality to Google's search engine.
The bot, released by small San Francisco-based company OpenAI two months ago, has wowed users by simply explaining complex concepts and generating ideas from scratch. More importantly for Google, it turned out that it could offer a new way to search for information on the Internet.
New artificial intelligence technology seems to have thrown Google off balance. Pichai declared a “code red”, upending existing plans and launching the development of his own AI. Google now aims to introduce more than 20 new products and demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot capabilities this year, according to a slide presentation reviewed by the New York Times and two people with knowledge of the plans who were not authorized to discuss them.