Google seems to be preparing to take on ChatGPT.
The company announced a research and artificial intelligence event titled “Google Presents: Live from Paris,” scheduled for February 8 at 8:30 a.m.
“We are reimagining the way people search, explore and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever to find what you need. Join us to discover how we are opening up better access to information for people everywhere, through Search, Maps and beyond,” the event description reads on Youtube(Opens in a new window).
While we don’t know if Google is actually planning to launch a new product or service during the event, it looks like it could be the answer to OpenAI’s fast-growing artificial intelligence chatbot, ChatGPT. A recent New York Times report(Opens in a new window) claimed that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, reported an internal “code red” after Launch of ChatGPT(Opens in a new window), because he sees it as an existential threat to his research activity. A few days ago, CNBC reported(Opens in a new window) that Google is already testing several new AI tools, including a chatbot called “Apprentice Bard”.
As The edge(Opens in a new window) pointed out, Google CEO Sundar Pichai made some interesting comments during yesterday’s earnings call. He said the company has big AI plans over the next few months and has been preparing for them since early last year. Pichai stopped short of saying exactly what the company plans to launch, but he said they would let people “interact directly” with its “newest and most powerful language models as a research companion.” . The first of these will be Google’s AI chatbot TheMDA(Opens in a new window)which until now was mainly reserved for Google’s own engineers and beta testers(Opens in a new window).
The timing of Google’s “Live from Paris” event is also interesting. As 9to5Google(Opens in a new window) pointed out, the event is similar in style to Google’s annual Search On events, but these take place in the fall. Google’s I/O conference will likely take place in May, so it’s not like Google doesn’t have enough opportunities to launch new products this year. February’s event comes out of nowhere, and perhaps it’s the immense popularity of ChatGPT that’s prompting Google to act quickly.
Again, none of this proves that Google will launch a product for the public on February 8th, but it will certainly be interesting to see what the company has to say about AI and research in a world where millions people are looking for answers. to the OpenAI chatbot instead of googling them.
