Emilia Chambers, Head of Digital, VIC, Carat
We all know the story; A hare challenges a tortoise to a race, confident that he will win due to the tortoise being so slow. So confident in fact that he has a nap mid-race, allowing the tortoise to pass the hare and win the race. Moral of the story; slow and steady wins the race.
Well today that race is AI and specially the use of AI to generate text. For many companies, most notably OpenAI, they have joined the race at a rapid speed recently, launching to market AI opportunities that the public can access and use. OpenAI is the company responsible for ChatGPT which has become a key talking point in many circles, from media, to education, and even politics. It allows users to ask questions and receive responses in a conversational way utilising technology that pulls from information from the internet and forms it into coherent and relevant responses to the questions being asked.
It's rapid increase in interest has put bigger companies, especially those in the search space, on notice; either join the race or prepare to be left behind and this is where the race gets interesting. In this week alone, both Google and Microsoft (Bing) have announced their own use of AI across their search platforms, but their approach was very different.
Microsoft went in with a new version of its search engine, Bing, powered by an upgraded version of the same AI technology that underpins ChatGPT. It’s being launched alongside new AI-enhanced features for its Edge browser, resulting in a new experience for browsing and searching for information online. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, even said “The race starts today, and we’re going to move and move fast,” in relation to the launch and the evolution to search which we haven’t seen to this extent for decades.
Now often when an announcement such as this hits the market, competitors are quick to join the race and fire back their own updates that are seemingly on par, if not better, than what was just announced. So, you would think that Google would roll out a polished product to rival Microsoft’s revived search engine but actually it was Microsoft that followed on from Google’s somewhat quieter and definitely more cautious announcement. Although some may argue that Google did in fact follow Microsoft after screenshots of the new Bing were leaked the week before, pushing them to get in ahead of Microsoft with their own announcement.
On February 6th, Google announced the launch of Bard, which was described on their blog by Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, as an “experimental conversational AI service” that will answer users’ queries and take part in conversations, amongst other functionalities. Information on the specifics of what Bard will be able to do has been limited and with no exact date as to when public access will be available, people have been left wondering why Google seemingly launched a product that doesn’t meet and beat its competitors.
The exact reasoning for this cautious, yet somewhat hasty, announcement may never be known but the last paragraph of the blog announcement suggests that it is due to Google wanting to manage the development and roll out of their AI products responsibly “to make AI safe and useful”. This cautious approach is a smart one given the criticisms that AI has faced recently around providing incorrect information, surfacing toxic speech and racial biases. ChatGPT, despite having no opinions of its own, is still able to be racist. Kanta Dihal, an AI researcher at the University of Cambridge, explained that “This bot doesn’t have fundamental beliefs. It reproduces texts that it has found on the internet, some of which are explicitly racist, some of which implicitly, and some of which are not.” It’s not a new challenge for AI but navigating it will be a continuing challenge for companies entering the AI space.
So why did Google choose now to announce a work in progress product that doesn’t seem to meet the functionality of its competitors? It all comes back to the race; and to cross the finish line, you first need to cross the start line. Google was ultimately backed into an AI corner and had to make a choice to join the race or risk missing out altogether. They chose to join but at a tortoise pace, and only time will tell whether their slower and more cautious approach will result in greater consumer confidence, brand support and stronger product capabilities in the future.