At Dreamforce, Salesforce's annual technology event, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai談及When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, it rarely admitted that it believed its technology had been surpassed, but it also emphasized that its AI layout did not stop there.
"They were the first to launch it, so they deserve recognition."
In response to a question from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Sundar Pichai said that ChatGPT was launched at OpenAI and attracted a lot of users in a short period of time, even directly affecting the search experience. Although Google had already developed a chatbot prototype at that time, there were still many problems, so it would take several months to officially launch it.
ChatGPT triggers a "red alert"
Back in late 2022, when ChatGPT launched, this Microsoft-backed AI chatbot posed a significant threat to Google. The New York Times reported at the time that Google management had issued a "red alert," with Sundar Pichai personally redeploying multiple teams to focus on AI development.
However, in this interview, Sundar Pichai compared this situation to the norm in the technology industry. For example, when Google was developing a video search function in 2006, YouTube "came out of nowhere" at that time, and when Facebook promoted the photo function in the news feed, Instagram came to the fore. Sundar Pichai believes that these are the norm in the process of technological development.
The Insight That the Window of Opportunity Has Changed
Although ChatGPT was widely believed to be a threat to Google, Sundar Pichai revealed that he was excited at the time and believed that the window of opportunity had changed.
Sundar Pichai explained that Google has already made comprehensive arrangements in the field of AI, from research teams to self-developed chips to infrastructure construction. Therefore, when ChatGPT entered the market and attracted everyone's attention, it actually put Google in an advantageous position as it had already prepared relevant AI technologies.
Considering reputational risk
Sundar Pichai also reiterated his previous position, explaining that the reason why Google did not immediately launch a chatbot competitor was that it faced greater "reputational risks" than OpenAI, and at the same time, it had to be more cautious in product releases when it had billions of users.
It was not until March 2023 that Google officially launched a chatbot named Bard, which was later renamed Gemini, officially joining the competitive battlefield of generative AI.
