American multinational technology conglomerate holding company, Alphabet is doubling down on artificial intelligence (AI) research by combining two of its most prominent units, Google Brain and DeepMind.
The move comes as the company aims to compete with rival systems, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
The new division will be led by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and its setting up will ensure “bold and responsible development of general AI”, Alphabet CEO Mr. Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.
Alphabet said the teams that are being combined have delivered a number of high-profile projects including the transformer, technology that formed the bedrock of some of OpenAI’s own work.
According to the statement, “Going forward, the Alphabet staff will work on “multimodal” AI, like OpenAI’s latest model GPT-4, which can respond not only to text prompts but to image inputs as well to generate new content.”
“Google has for decades dominated the search market, with a share of over 80 percent, but Wall Street fears that the Alphabet unit could fall behind Microsoft Corp in the fast-moving AI race,” as per the statement.
Technology from OpenAI, funded by Microsoft, powers the rival software maker’s updated Bing search engine.
Earlier this month, Alphabet announced the launch of Bard in order to take on ChatGPT as well. It lost $100 billion in value on February 8 after Bard shared inaccurate information in a promotional video and a company event failed to dazzle.
