The boom of Artificial Intelligence (AI) does not slow down and large companies began to react to the overwhelming irruption ofChatGPT at the end of last year.
The battle we will see in the coming months is over who will lead – and therefore who will decide the conceptual and commercial framework – the way we consume and generate information. But not only that but also in the transformations that we can achieve in various aspects of our daily lives with all that information.
One of those companies that reacted is Google, which in order not to lose ground is willing to drastically change the way the results of its famous searches are displayed, its main business. Nothing less.
Among all the novelties presented on Wednesday in California, in its already traditional annual event "Google I / O" for developers (which celebrated 15 editions), the focus was on AI, a field that is struggling to master.
The threat to Google is very clear. At least the item called generative AI of content (especially texts and words), seems to be in the hands of other companies, such as Microsoft.
The startup OpenAI (where Microsoft invested more than 10 billion dollars) surprised when last November it presented version 3.5 of ChatGPT open to any user. It was a revolution. In just two months it reached 100 million users, becoming the fastest adopted application in history.
Since February Microsoft uses the ChatGPT in its Bing search engine (Bing AI) and this hits hard at the heart of the Google business where for more than 20 years it was master and lord: search.
The AI boom transforms internet searches
The Indian Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet. (Photo: Bloomberg)
We live in dizzying times that force drastic changes. That is why in the coming weeks we will see modifications in the traditional results of Google searches. These will be more visual and a green background window will appear with AI-generated text with information, questions and links related to the searched topic. The business behind SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a big unknown.
It is clear that we are moving towards a search model where, unlike typing a word and having a list of links thrown at us as has happened until now, there is a more fluid conversation between users and machines. Where one can ask and have a chat with a digital assistant to help us and guide us in what we want to do, from a recipe to planning our vacations or a presentation for work.
In this sense, now Google bets all the chips on Bard, its AI platform for mass consumption presented a few months ago, without success. It had a couple of bugs and was also only available in the US and UK. Times accelerate.
Pichai, during the annual developer event, Google I/O 2023. (Photo: EFE)
It will be ready to use in more than 180 countries in order to expand the number of users. For that, the search engine company has its own language model called PaLM. Version 1 was released last year and this week they showed version 2. He was trained, they say, with more than 100 different languages, which allows him not only to translate but to understand jokes, riddles, topics and even ironies.
Now it will be integrated with more than 20 products of the company, such as the search engine (key in its advertising revenue), Gmail (to write emails), Photos, Maps, YouTube, Docs (to generate documents) and of course, in Android, the operating system of all cell phones in the world that are not iPhone.
The goal is to bring together all the power generated by its multiple products to expand AI worldwide. As CEO Sundar Pichai said yesterday: "We are at a turning point."
There is no time to lose. The battle has just begun.
SL
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