Google to launch its ChatGPT rival soon

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has shared the search giant plan to add AI features to its search engine. During the fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, the CEO said that people "very soon" will be able to "interact directly" with his "newest, most powerful model as a companion to search in experimental and innovative ways." Google Search will use LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications), Google's language model, to deliver "factual" and conversational results to queries. This comes a day after a report indicated that Google is preparing to rival ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot that has gone viral.

Pichai notes that the enhanced search engine should be available for testing in the "coming weeks and months." This might be during the Google IO 2023 event in May, which is the annual developer conference introducing new software and hardware.

During the earnings call, Pichai kept coming back to the capabilities of AI and how the world is all set to use it, referring to the positive response from the public to OpenAI's ChatGPT. "AI is the deepest technology we're working on today," Pichai said in his opening remarks. The company would also offer APIs and new tools for developers and partners to build their "own apps and discover new possibilities in AI."

At Google IO 2021, Google showcased first-generation LaMDA capabilities; however, it soon sparked controversy after an engineer claimed that the conversational chatbot "is aware." The engineer also said that the LaMDA-powered chatbot could support some stereotypes, which few may view as racist and sexist. However, a report affirmed that Google is working on LaMDA to fix these bugs and that the tech giant is also testing other chatbots amid the growing popularity of ChatGPT.

It's also been reported that Google is taking feedback from employees, as some units have been asked to step up efforts after management called ChatGPT "code red." The report notes that recent internal tests showed that LaMDA is improving and outperforming ChatGPT in some cases.