Alphabet Inc’s Google is expected to add more artificial intelligence to its products on Wednesday in response to the latest challenge from Microsoft Corp, which has threatened its position as the market leader in the nearly $300 billion search advertising industry.
Through an internal project codenamed Magi, Google aimed to imbue its own search engine with generative artificial intelligence, technology that can respond to queries with human-like prose and generate new content from historical data.
As Google executives take the stage at its annual I/O conference in Mountain View, California, close to the company’s headquarters, the initiative will be the subject of the most attention. The outcome could affect how consumers access global information and which company obtains the $286 billion global market for search advertising, according to research firm MAGNA.
Since competitors began utilizing generative AI as an alternative method for presenting web content, Google’s position as the leading internet portal, which it has held for years, is in jeopardy. First came ChatGPT, a Microsoft-backed chatbot dubbed by industry observers as Google’s disruptor.
In response to Microsoft’s AI search challenge, Google is widely anticipated to reveal
Microsoft’s Bing search engine was updated with a similarly dexterous chatbot that can answer questions for which there is no apparent online answer, such as what car seat to purchase for a specific vehicle model.
Microsoft last month extolled U.S. market share gains for Bing, which has recently grown to more than 100 million daily active users, but remains eclipsed by Google’s billions of searches. Competitors of Google have taken its research breakthroughs from prior years and outpaced its inventor.
This has been both a technological and a business affront: Microsoft estimated that for every percentage point of market share it gained in search advertising, it could generate an additional $2 billion in revenue.
Teams at Google have been racing for months to release technology at I/O or earlier, similar to its ChatGPT competitor Bard, to defend the company’s property. This year, Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai stated that Google Search would receive generative AI to simplify complex queries, as well as more perspectives, “like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar.”
Google is also attempting to rededicate itself to research. CNBC reported that the company is anticipated to announce the PaLM 2 AI model at its conference on Wednesday. The company is also anticipated to unveil new hardware for its Pixel devices, according to media reports.