On Episode 3 of Localogy’s This Week in Local podcast, Co-hosts Mike Boland and I discussed all the buzz around Open AI‘s Chat GPT large language model chatbot that everyone seems to be talking about. If not obsessing over.
Search for AI or ChatGPT on Twitter. You will come across endless suggestions of professions that face extinction at the hands of ChatGPT. Or perhaps from other generative AI tools like DALL.E.2 (also from Open AI) or others. Writers, photographers, lawyers, and graphic designers. The list is endless. Or at least it seems to be. Others simply see these emerging AI tools as instruments to help the best in these professionals do their jobs better. We shall see who is right. It will probably be a mixed bag. As most things are.
On TWIL Episode 3, Mike and I specifically debate the degree to which ChatGPT represents a threat to Google Search. Our basic conclusion was that it is probably far too early to say. We also agreed that anything that comes along and is heralded as a “Google Killer” should be viewed skeptically.
You can check out what we have to say in our AI episode here.
The Debate Rages
Yet, despite a dose of cold water from your humble TWIL hosts, the debate continues to rage over the degree to which Open AI and ChatGPT specifically threaten Google. And a couple of recent moves suggest the debate is likely only to intensify.
First, we’ve been reading along with everyone else that Microsoft’s perennial runner-up search engine Bing will integrate ChatGPT in a move clearly designed to make it more of a threat to Google Search. Bing has never done this successfully. This is despite being widely regarded as a pretty good product. The subscription-based, ad-free, and privacy-forward search engine Neeva, for example, is built on Bing.
Neeva, founded by Google’s former head of advertising Sridhar Ramaswamy, also reportedly sees AI as a leverage point to get ahead and plans to embed its own ChatGPT-like chatbot into its product.
Microsoft’s connection to ChatGPT is pretty clear-cut. The software company invested $1 billion in Open AI. And ChatGPT is built on Microsoft Azure.
There is another similar move that would make sense, but we still haven’t seen it. Twitter, now owned by Elon Musk, could also make itself more robust by integrating ChatGPT. Overnight it competes with Google. Musk is a founder of Open AI (along with Sam Altman). However, Musk is no longer directly involved with Open AI.
Big Valuation
So more big ChatGPT-related news emerged this week. We learned that OpenAI is now raising money at a $29 billion valuation. This combined with the Bing news suggests Open AI is taking its commercial opportunity vis-a-vis Google seriously.
An open question remains whether Google is taking the threat seriously. After all, Google has grown accustomed to swatting aside challengers like Bing over the years. When we last wrote about ChatGPT, we shared reporting from CNBC that Google execs dismissed the idea of launching a ChatGPT competitor, at least not hurriedly, despite Google’s widely acknowledged prowess at AI.
The reason for going slow? Reputational risk, according to CNBC’s report on a Google all-hands at which the chatbot wars were a key discussion topic. Google’s leadership apparently said it was concerned that any commercial chatbot that gives imperfect answers (as ChatGPT reportedly does), would undermine Google’s position as the undisputed leader in search.
Fair enough, Google. But at what point will the chatbot ship have sailed? Will Google then be forced to pay too much for ChatGPT? Or to rush its own large language chatbot to market in a manner that it refuses to do today? As we like to say on This Week in Local, let’s wait and see.
