- Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the public’s sudden interest in AI surprised the company.
- At an event at Stanford University, Pichai said he had a “different feeling about the trajectory.”
- Google has fought off rumors that it was thrown into panic mode after the launch of ChatGPT.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted that the boom in generative AI surprised Google.
At an event at Stanford University earlier this month, the tech boss said his company was “surprised” by the public’s sudden interest in AI.
Although he said he recognized the importance of the technology years ago, he admitted he had “a different vision of the trajectory in mind” when it came to the adoption of AI by the Company.
Google has been dogged by rumors that it was thrown into panic following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Pichai reportedly issued a “code red” over the chatbot’s sudden popularity, subsequently devoting resources to Google’s AI development and bringing the company’s co-founders back into the fold to help with product efforts.
Since launching ChatGPT, Google has pushed its own AI, launching a rival product and consolidating its AI teams. Last year, the company merged its two AI research groups, Google Brain and DeepMind, into a single new team, Google DeepMind.
But while its old rival Microsoft benefited from its early investments in OpenAI and quickly released products, Google has struggled to control the discourse around AI in the same way.
The company also suffered two embarrassing setbacks on the AI front. First when its Bard chatbot made a mistake during a demo and later when its Gemini model failed to generate historically accurate images, causing a storm of backlash.
Pichai later said the company had “gone wrong” with Gemini, acknowledging that some of the model’s responses had offended users and “showed bias.”
However, according to Pichai, AI is still in its infancy and Google is ready to fight.
“I feel incredibly well-positioned for what’s coming, and we’re just at the very beginning,” he said at the event.
Google representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment, made outside of normal business hours.
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