US-based Alphabet and China-based Baidu publicly announced their rival ChatGPT on Monday as generative AI threatens to throw a bombshell into the world of internet search.
In a blog post released Monday, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai revealed more details about his own generative AI program, called “Bard.” Pichai said his “experimental conversational AI service” will provide deeper answers “to questions that have no right answer.”
Pichai said Bard will be released to “trusted testers” first, before being released to the general public in a few weeks.
In an internal memo sent after the blog post, Pichai said Google would “enroll every Googler to help shape Bard and donate through company-specific dogfood,” CNBC reported. (The term “dogfood” is a term used in tech companies to refer to employees who use their own company’s products as if they were end users.)
Pichai continued that the company will solicit feedback from employees “in the spirit of an internal hackathon.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Google reportedly issued a “code red” after releasing ChatGPT, as the company sees the program as a serious threat to internet search, its main product. The company has launched more AI research since the launch of ChatGPT, including MusicLM, a program that can generate music using hummed or whistled melodies or texts.
Microsoft, the Bing search engine that competes with Google, has invested $10 billion into ChatGPT’s developer, OpenAI, and is reportedly working to program OpenAi into its products.
Baidu’s ‘Ernie Bot’
Just a few hours later, another tech giant on the other side of the world announced its own competitor to ChatGPT.
Chinese technology company Baidu said it is on track to complete trials of its own conversational AI bot, named “Ernie Bot” in English, in March. Like Google, Baidu reportedly plans to integrate the bot as part of its search engine, using generative AI to write written answers to search queries.
Shares in Baidu were up 15.6% at 2:40 pm Hong Kong time.
Baidu is investing heavily in artificial intelligence to help recapture its losing rivals. The company was one of the first successful internet companies in China, offering search to Chinese users (within the borders of China’s internet censorship). But the company failed to capitalize on the rise of smartphones, losing out in advertising and video to companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Bytedance.
Baidu CEO Robin Li cited ChatGPT as an example of a technology where the company can overtake rivals at an internal meeting last December, Bloomberg reports.
Last year, Baidu launched ERNIE-ViLG, an AI that produces images similar to programs like Stable Diffusion. Users report that the program generates some images, as it includes Chinese content, better than its Western counterpart, yet MIT Technology Review note ERNIE-ViLG does not produce images of content considered politically sensitive.
Baidu is also developing self-driving cars. The company received permission from authorities to test driverless robotaxis in Beijing last December.
OpenAI has not yet made ChatGPT available in mainland China. Still, the program has spread in the country, as Chinese internet users have found ways to access the application.
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