Google poised to introduce ChatGPT rival

AI-BASED LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS TO BE AVAILABLE SOON: CEO PICHAI

An Artificial Intelligence battle brewing in tech discourses and social media is hotting up with Google deciding to take on the challenge from viral chatbot ChatGPT head-on by releasing its own large language models to the public.

Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said Google will make artificial intelligence-based large language models like LaMDA available “in the coming weeks and months.”

Google will be releasing its AI model on its search page, arguably the most popular webpage in the world which millions of users open before going about their internet business daily. The bot will be made available “as a companion to search”, Pichai said on a conference call following the internet search giant’s fourth-quarter earnings report on Thursday.

“We are just at the beginning of our AI journey, and the best is yet to come,” he said.

The move is seen as Google’s answer to OpenAI’s conversational bot ChatGPT which has been acquiring a massive following in the last few weeks. The chatbot, one of the first large language models released to the public, has received rave reviews from both the tech elite and the public and has crossed 100 million active users in just two months.

Long overdue

Google’s move to counter a likely impact of ChatGPT on its search and related products is seen as long overdue. After all, the company sees itself as a pioneer in AI with products like DeepMind and LaMDA. Google considered DeepMind as a long-term project but the exploits of its AI chatbot LaMDA was ‘outed’ by its software engineer Blake Lemoine last year. He has claimed that LaMDA is a self-aware person and Google moved in quickly to place Lemoine on leave. The way things are progressing, users will very soon be able to judge the capability of LaMDA on their browsers. The announcement becomes significant as Google’s rival Microsoft Corp has invested heavily in OpenAI.