What you need to know
- Google will hold an event on February 8, 2023 to discuss improvements to its search engine and other services.
- It’s suspected that the company will unveil some form of AI integration with Google search.
- ChatGPT is rumored to have an upcoming integration with Microsoft’s Bing, which may have driven Google to move forward with its own AI plans for search.
Microsoft has plans to integrate ChatGPT into Bing, according to recent reports. But there’s a chance that Google may beat Microsoft to the punch. Google will hold an event in Paris on Wednesday, February 8, 2023. The company hasn’t shared much about it, but the YouTube page is already live and has a description:
“We’re reimagining how people search for, explore and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need. Join us to learn how we’re opening up greater access to information for people everywhere, through Search, Maps and beyond.”
There’s a chance that Google could be referring to something else, but PCMag highlighted the fact that Google CEO Sundar Pichai discussed AI and search in a recent earnings call. That makes it seem likely that the tech giant will unveil something that involves artificial intelligence and search.
“Very soon, people will be able to interact directly with our newest, most powerful language models as a companion to Search in experimental and innovative ways. Stay tuned,” said Pichai.
Google has been in the AI game for quite some time. It unveiled LaMDA back in 2021, which was the follow-up to Meena and other AI bots. One engineer found LaMDA so convincing that they thought the tool had become sentient. That’s unlikely, but LaMDA is powerful enough to improve Google’s search capabilities.
While Google has worked on artificial intelligence for years, it was believed at one point that the company would not create a consumer-facing tool similar to ChatGPT. Those plans reportedly changed when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met with the company’s current CEO. Pichai invited Page and Brin to discuss AI and how to integrate it with search, according to The New York Times.
