Faced with the threat posed by ChatGPT and, above all, its association with Microsoft, Google has decided to pull out the heavy artillery. And on February 8, the Web giant will unveil the AI weapon that it will integrate into its tools. War is declared !
Many people see ChatGPT, the conversational artificial intelligence developed by OpenAI, as a potential competitor to Google. Artificial intelligence is truly impressive, with its ability to provide comprehensive, complex and above all unique answers – which, by the way, gives teachers a hard time. But even if the tool is far from perfect – it often makes mistakes and spreads fake news with great conviction – Microsoft was quick to see the potential of the technology and has now and already planned to integrate it with its Bing search engine as well as its Microsoft 365 office suite in order to attack Google on its own territory. No wonder the Mountain View firm, yet a pioneer in the field of AI, is really worried. Even if it alone holds 90% of the sector’s market share and that, compared to it, the Redmond firm, yet number two, seems very tiny, it must not waste time, because more ChatGPT is used by internet users, the better it gets. Google has therefore launched a “red code” and reorganized various departments to move forward on its AI projects, which it is about to unveil to the public.
Google AI: see you on February 8 to discover the new tools
Against all odds, the digital giant is not going to wait for its big Google I/O conference, which is held in the spring, to talk about its progress in artificial intelligence. Indeed, he announced a surprise press conference to be held on February 8 from 2:30 p.m. French time – it will also be broadcast live on YouTube. An announcement that comes shortly after Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, claimed that the company would soon allow “to interact directly” with its “latest and most powerful language models as a research companion”. We obviously think of LaMDA, the conversational intelligence that a researcher thought had a soul, and Sparrow, a chatbot quite similar to ChatGPT (see our article).
In description of the announcement video, Google explains that “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 people around the world, through search, Maps and beyond”. We can therefore expect improvements to Google Maps but also, given the thumbnail of the video, Google Lens and Google Shopping. Of the sources cited by CNBC also mentioned another chatbot called Apprentice Bard and the integration of a new AI on the search engine that Google would currently have its employees test. We will have to wait until February 8 to see our curiosity satisfied!