Google to Unveil its AI Chatbot amid ChatGPT’s Growing Popularity

Only in December did Sundar Pichai declare code red at Google to chart strategy for developing Google's AI chatbot

As New York Times reports, Google has sought help from two of its most prominent engineers, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who now keep themselves away from day-to-day affairs at Google. This meeting reportedly was called to discuss the strategies to counter the growing popularity of OpenAI's ChatGPT and develop an equally competitive Google AI chatbot. This is a sure sign that Google is under severe pressure to amp up its chatbot game, lest it might lose to ChatGPT, and the search engine business, which is valued at $ 149 billion. Only in December Google CEO Sundar Pichai declared 'code red' at Google. According to people who have ideas of transactions, Google is planning to demonstrate a better and ethical AI chatbot and 20 other AI products at its I/O conference to be held in May, though the timeline for Google's AI chatbot demo isn't yet finalized.

The other AI projects presented by the panel of executives include an image generation tool to create and edit images, an improvised version of AI Test Kitchen, which is essentially an app for testing product prototypes, a Tik Tok style green screen mode for YouTube, and a video creation tool to summarize other video clips. Google is also planning to unveil features like Shopping Try-on, a wallpaper creator for Pixel phones, and Colab+ an AI-enabled tool to help android app developers. Google's AI code generator PaLM-Coder2 will compete with apps like Microsoft's Copilot software and of course ChatGPT's coding acumen.

Google, being a conventional player and averse to taking 'reputational risk', is relatively slow in developing AI products. In the past, Google was under fire for firing its scientists Timmit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell on ethical grounds. Gebru and Mitchell were accused of breaking Google's code of confidentiality by talking about Google's LLM model, PaLM. The scientists reportedly accused Google of using biased data to train its language models. After Gebru and Mitchell, two other ethics researchers also left Google. Now that ChatGPT is standing at its door threatening to knock it out, Google is apparently speeding up its product development and approval process that is meant to ensure that operating procedures are in line with prescribed ethical standards. A survey released by Finbold, a finance portal reveals that global search for the word 'ChatGPT' on Google had spiked to hit a popularity score of 92%. Now that Microsoft, an OpenAI investor is planning to integrate some of ChatGPT's tech into its search engine Bing, and Azure OpenAI service, there is enough reason for Google to panic.

However, Google wants to ensure the hastening doesn't come in the way of releasing an AI chatbot that is immune to ethical loopholes. As per sources, the Google AI search demo will get the facts right, get rid of misinformation, and at the same time ensure safety. The checks are meant to address the issue of AI responding to queries confidently and correctly with bad information. In a memo to the staff, after firing 12,000 employees, the Google CEO wrote, "I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI. To fully capture it, we'll need to make tough choices."