Is Google’s business model at risk? Why is Google afraid of ChatGPT’s popularity?
Highlights:
- According to the New York Times, Google issued a “code red” warning about the growing threat posed by artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT.
- According to the article, CEO Sundar Pichai has reallocated some resources to work on expanding the company’s artificial intelligence offerings.
- Is Google’s business model at risk?
ChatGPT, a much-loved artificial intelligence application from OpenAI, has introduced a potential new model for Internet search. The chatbot provides comprehensive explanations in response to questions on topics such as political science and computer programming, and since it uses a question-and-answer structure, users can go deeper until they fully understand it.
Similar searches on Google require users to study results and browse many websites before coming to their own judgments. In contrast, ChatGPT provides a definite (or at least definitive) response within seconds.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become the dominant messaging platform online. OpenAI has made its AI-powered chatbot publicly available for testing, so anyone can try it out and understand how it works without paying.
Many assert that ChatGPT’s responses are more interactive and human-like, so it has a strong potential to dethrone Google Search. The fact that ChatGPT can analyze and generate programs in a matter of seconds discourages would-be programmers. It allows solving even difficult math problems.
Google’s higher-ups are talking about posting a “code red” because of the growing prominence of ChatGPT AI.
The arrival of ChatGPT, a popular conversational AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, has reportedly prompted Google management to issue a “code red” raising concerns about the future of the Google search engine.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, attended multiple meetings about Google’s business plan and instructed multiple departments to shift their focus to combating ChatGPT’s threat to Google’s core competency, The Times has learned, according to an internal report and recording device.
The Times reports that multiple Google departments, including R&D, Trust & Safety and others, have been told to shift focus to facilitate the development and launch of new artificial intelligence (AI) prototypes and products. The Times reports that some of the workers have been tasked with creating an artificial intelligence product that can create artwork and photos on par with OpenAI’s DALL-E, which is used by millions of people around the world.
A Google representative did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Insider. Amid internal and external debate over whether ChatGPT, led by former Y Combinator president Sam Altman, could disrupt the search engine and threaten Google’s TV commercial marketing strategy, Google decided to focus on artificial intelligence (AI) products.
Sridhar Ramaswamy, who oversaw Google’s marketing group from 2013 to 2018, told Insider that ChatGPT will discourage users from engaging with Google ads. In 2021, ads earned Google $208 billion, or 81% of Alphabet’s total revenue.
Within the first five days of its release, ChatGPT had over one million active subscribers. ChatGPT generates personalized and humanized responses to inquiries by analyzing data collected from thousands of web pages. As reported in a recent article by Insider, chatbots have been asked to perform a variety of tasks, including writing college essays, teaching coding, and providing therapy.
However, it has somehow been observed that something goes wrong with the bot. According to Insider’s interviews with AI specialists, ChatGPT cannot verify its claims or distinguish between true and fraudulent information. This ability to create new solutions is called “hallucinations” in the field of artificial intelligence.
Bloomberg reports that the bot can make offensive statements, including those of a sexist and racist nature. The Times reports that Google is wary of releasing its artificial intelligence chatbot LaMDA (short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications) to the world because of the chatbot’s high potential for inaccuracies and toxic effects. According to a recent CNBC story, Google executives are worried about making it widely available in its current version because of “reputational risk.”
Until the introduction of ChatGPT, chatbots “were not a tool that customers could use consistently,” Google Brain Soobin Ghahramani, head of Google’s artificial intelligence division, told The Times.
Instead of removing the search engine, Google will focus on improving it over time, experts told the Times. Google is rumored to be researching advanced AI services, so if they debut at I/O, the corporation’s annual developer convention scheduled for May, it will be a big deal.
AI products and prototypes from Google
Google has asked teams from research, trust, security and other divisions to help create and introduce new AI prototypes and products.
Is Google’s business model at risk?
According to Sridhar Ramaswamy, who ran Google’s advertising division from 2013 to 2018, ChatGPT could prevent people from clicking on Google links with ads that generated $208 billion in 2021, or 81 percent of Alphabet’s total revenue.
Is ChatGPT a threat to Google?
There are some similarities between ChatGPT and Google Search. The UI is helpful for gathering information and is comparable to Google Search. Although there are some important differences between the two.
Using Google Search and ChatGPT
It is inaccurate to suggest that ChatGPT is a “Google killer” because the two technologies are different and have different uses. The GPT language model has a variant called ChatGPT, which was created specifically for chatbot applications. By typing keywords or phrases into a search bar, users of Google’s search engine can find information on the Internet.
Google analyzes billions of websites, sorts their content by relevance, and then ranks the results. Finally, it generates a list of options for you to choose from. ChatGPT offers an attractive alternative to time-bound web surfers, providing only the appropriate answer based on its own search and synthesis of that information.
If the information were published online until the end of 2021, ChatGPT is programmed on thousands of web pages to learn not only how to have natural conversations with humans, in addition to the actual substance of those conversations.
Google offers its own dense responses to some queries, however, these responses are often concise compilations of web pages with top search engine rankings. Additionally, it features a sophisticated proprietary language model called LaMDA, which one of the company’s engineers mistakenly believed to be system-sensitive.
Why doesn’t Google provide its own unique responses to queries like ChatGPT? That’s because anything that makes it harder for users to read search results hurts Google’s transactional business model, which depends on getting users to click on ads. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, 81% of Alphabet Inc.’s $257.6 billion in revenue in 2021 will come from advertising, with a large portion of that coming from Google’s pay-per-click ads.
In just five days, ChatGPT reached 1 million users. That’s a remarkable achievement; Facebook took ten months to get there compared to Instagram’s 2.5 months. Although OpenAI isn’t publicly speculating about its potential, Google could be at serious risk if its new chatbot starts sending connections to other websites, especially those that offer goods.
