Competition for AI-powered search between Microsoft and Google heats up
Google unveiled an AI chatbot, Bard, that will be integrated into its search engine soon in the face of rising competition from Microsoft’s Bing and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Talk of Microsoft revamping its search engine Bing with a massive investment in OpenAI’s upcoming large language model GPT-4 has kicked Google into building its own rival service.
Large language models have rapidly improved and are better at generating text, summarizing knowledge, and answering questions. They aren’t perfect, however, and can still produce toxic and false information. But folks are fascinated and drawn to the new technology and a recent report from analysts at UBS claimed ChatGPT had reached 100 million monthly users to become the fastest-growing internet app in history.
Will users suddenly turn their backs on Google and flock to Bing if Microsoft juices up web search with an even more powerful language model? This remains to be seen, but it’s clear the times they are a-changin’ in AI and search.
Google dominates in the search market, and uses its power to reap billions in online advertising – Alphabet’s largest source of revenue. As Microsoft threatens to eat into these profits, Google has had to come up with its own answer for AI-powered search, and quickly.
