At its annual I/O conference last week, Google announced that it is moving quickly to add features like ChatGPT to Search. Whether users will find them useful remains to be seen. According to some journalists who have seen the initial rollout of these, product search will start with synthesized content from individual reviews, in essence. However, it is not immediately clear how concise summaries improve the search experience.
A few months back, OpenAI, a company backed by Microsoft, released ChatGPT, which quickly grabbed millions of users, many who see it as a ‘great leap forward’ for the Internet. Microsoft incorporated some of those capabilities into Bing Chat (an add-on to its own search engine, Bing). Curiously, it was researchers at Alphabet’s Google and its sister company DeepMind that developed some of the core technology at work in the new chatbots, but Google was cautious about publicly launching its precursor to ChatGPT, called LaMDA.
But popular interest in ChatGPT caused Google to scramble to catch up. In March, Google changed strategy, announcing a ChatGPT competitor called Bard, whose launch was riddled with errors. In April, Google said it was combining its AI research group with DeepMind’s. And last week, at I/O, generative AI in search was announced.
However, unlike Microsoft’s Bing, which is rolling out a similar feature globally, Google has restricted its generative AI capabilities to its users in the US. Why is Google so selective about this technology? To me, when it comes to generative AI, it seems like Google still has the technical edge on generative AI, so this caution is puzzling.
According to an article in Wired magazine, (bit.ly/42W0Gu9), the allegedly unreleased experience of these new features may reflect the fact that their launch is a defensive move: “Google has made big strides in AI in recent years.” has invested sums and major resources, yet Google still found itself wrong with the advent of ChatGPT, a surprisingly clever and talkative – though also fundamentally flawed – chatbot from OpenAI…. Because ChatGPT As most of the web was trained, users quickly found a new way to search it, even if bots were prone to fabricate information. Microsoft launched ChatGPT in January by investing $10 billion in OpenAI, and then a month later in Bing. Capturing this potential by incorporating
Google’s dominance could make this latest move the biggest test yet of the power and usefulness of functionality like ChatGPT. But there are risks to this move. Because language models are sometimes created to concoct sets of words, search firms must develop ways to test that the information provided to users is accurate. Most importantly, Google needs to avoid cannibalizing its search advertising business, which provides a significant portion of the company’s revenue.
As most of us now know, Generative AI uses complex algorithms and neural networks to analyze large amounts of data and generate new content based on that analysis. In a search engine context, this technique can be used to create more in-depth and personalized answers to user queries, considering a wide range of relevant factors.
Without enough data, AI cannot produce accurate or meaningful results. This is where Google’s decision to restrict its generative AI capabilities to the US market makes more sense. The US is home to some of the largest and most diverse data-sets in the world, making it an ideal environment for training generative AI models. From publicly available government data to vast amounts of user-generated content on social media platforms, the US provides a wealth of data that cannot be replicated in most other countries.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s decision to roll out its generative AI capabilities globally could be seen as a strategic move to gain an advantage over Google. By making this technology available to users around the world, Microsoft is positioning its Bing as a more global and accessible search engine than Google. This can be especially important in emerging markets, where access to relevant and personalized information is becoming increasingly important.
But Microsoft’s approach also comes with problems. To roll out this technology globally, Microsoft will need to collect and analyze massive amounts of data from a wide range of sources. This is no small feat and is likely to take time and significant resources to accomplish. Nevertheless, the fact that ChatGPT has taken the world by storm since its release leaves no doubt that Microsoft has scaled it up. It can play the role of ‘cowboy’ in this market and take more risks, as it has less to lose than Google in the search engine market.
Google’s cautious rollout may also mean that it is unwilling to risk its core business and wants to lead in how generative AI is used in a way that protects its advertising revenue. Is. Wired quotes Arvind Srinivas, CEO of a competing generative AI search tool startup, who says, “Google is combining generative content with traditional search results and not replacing them, which shows the company is improving its search engine.” How hesitant to mess with the advertising business.”
At its I/O conference last week, Alphabet-owned Google announced a number of other services that use the same generative AI found in ChatGPT. But it’s its early efforts to integrate this technology into its flagship search engine that may be most important to its users and the company’s future. It’s no wonder the firm is being so cautious in its approach.
Siddharth Pai is the co-founder of Sienna Capital, a venture fund manager.
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