As the competition in the AI race heats up, Google appears to be
taking the lead with its innovative developments. According to a recent
interview with CEO Sundar Pichai by The Wall Street Journal, Google’s search
engine may soon be supercharged with conversational AI.
Pichai’s
comments are particularly significant as tech giants like Meta and Microsoft
race to integrate AI technologies into their products and services. Despite
this competition, Pichai was confident that Google would be able to engage
with users in the context of search through large language models (LLMs).
Google
has already developed LLMs that can process and respond to prompts in
natural language with human-like answers. However, the technology has not
yet been integrated into Google’s search engine, which accounts for more
than half of the company’s revenue.
In March, Google hinted at
its plans to integrate AI into its search engines with the launch of Bard,
its rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. However, there was no information on the
timeline.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has already integrated ChatGPT
into its Bing search engine, giving the company an edge over Google. This
comes as Google is facing pressure from investors to cut costs and is
grappling with concerns of inflation and recession. The company recently
announced plans to lay off 6% of its workforce, which amounts to nearly
12,000 employees.
Despite these challenges, Pichai’s comments
suggest that Google may soon be able to distinguish itself from its
competitors by integrating LLMs into its search engine. Only time will tell
if Google can maintain its lead in the AI race.