Google tried to reassure investors and analysts during its quarterly results on Thursday that it is still a leader in AI development. The company’s Q4 2022 results have been highly anticipated as investors and the tech industry awaited Google’s response to the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has the potential to threaten its core business.
During the conversation Google CEO Sundar Pichai spoke about the company’s plans to make AI-based large language models (LLMs) like LaMDA available in the coming weeks and months. Pichai said users will soon be able to use large language models to search. An LLM, like ChatGPT, is a deep learning algorithm that can recognize, summarize and generate text and other content based on knowledge from huge amounts of text data. Pichai said the models that users will soon be able to use are especially good for composing, constructing and summarizing.
“Now that we can integrate more direct LLM-like experiences into Search, I think it will help us expand and offer new types of use cases, generative use cases,” said Pichai. “And so I think I see this as an opportunity to rethink and reinvent and drive Search to also solve more use cases for our users. It’s still early days, but you’ll see us being bold , get things out there, get feedback and iterate and improve things.”
Pichai’s comments about the potential ChatGPT rival come after a report this week revealed that Microsoft is working to include a faster version of ChatGPT, known as GPT-4, in Bing. piece of search market share, more competitive with Google. ChatGPT’s popularity has reportedly led Google to turn to co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin for help in combating the potential threat. The New York Times recently reported that Page and Brin had several meetings with executives to strategize for the company’s AI plans.
During the call, Pichai warned investors and analysts that the technology will have to scale slowly and that he says the big language is still in its infancy. He also said that the company develops AI with a deep sense of responsibility and will be careful when launching AI-based products as the company plans to launch beta features initially and then scale up slowly.
He further noted that Google will provide new tools and APIs to developers, makers and partners to enable them to build their own applications and discover new possibilities with AI.
In addition, Google has announced that starting Q1 2023, the company will change its reporting structure for its DeepMind AI segment. The segment will now be reported as part of Alphabet’s operating expenses, rather than being reported in the Other Bets umbrella, which includes long-term payout projects. Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said the reporting change “reflects the strategic focus in DeepMind to support each of our segments.”
The move is also meant to let the industry know that the company is serious about investing in the emerging space of AI.
Shortly after the call, the tech giant revealed that it is holding a search and AI event on February 8. The aim of the event is to showcase how Google is “using the power of AI to reinvent how people search for, explore and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need read an invitation sent to reporters, which also includes hints about Google Maps, Lens, Shopping and Translate.
Google usually shares updates on Maps, Lens, and other similar products at its I/O conference in May, making this new surprise event interesting. With it taking place in a few days, it looks like Google is focusing on addressing threats to its core business and reassuring investors that it is still an “AI-first” company.
“AI is the deepest technology we’re working on today,” Pichai said on the call. “Our talented researchers, infrastructure and technology mean we are extremely well positioned as AI reaches a turning point. More than six years ago, I first talked about Google as an AI-first company. Since then we have been a leader in the development of AI. We are only at the beginning of our AI journey and the best is yet to come,” he said.
Another new development that shows Google’s focus on AI is the news that it is investing $300 million in AI startup Anthropic. The news was first reported by the Financial times and Google confirmed the investment to businessroundups.org on Friday. Anthropic’s recently introduced AI model Claude is seen as a rival to ChatGPT. The new financing will value the San Francisco-based company at approximately $5 billion. The news comes as Microsoft recently announced a multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI.
During the conversation, Pichai reiterated that Google has been investing in AI for several years.
While this is true, the company hasn’t really made much noteworthy progress in public. For example, the company has the AI Playground application, which had the potential to resemble ChatGPT, but was purposely limited. The company also unveiled an AI language model called PaLM, which stands for Pathways Language Model, at I/O last year. It’s the company’s largest model yet, but Google has yet to share its plans for the model or how it will be used.
Despite Google’s assurances, investors are now watching closely how the search giant responds to the looming threat posed by ChatGPT. Although shares of Alphabet opened lower today after the company submitted a disappointing fourth-quarter earnings report, the company recouped all of its losses by noon.
