Can Google's Co-founder Help Them Win The AI Race?

According to Statista, the widespread availability of Internet resources has led to a surge in interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI). By 2025, it is anticipated that the use of AI will have increased considerably across a wide range of industries.

Online advertising giants Meta, Alphabet and Amazon are all placing bets that generative AI will become integral to their operations in the near future. CNBC reports that each of these companies has lately released or announced plans for a suite of tools designed to make it easier for businesses to produce content such as messages, photos, and videos for their individual platforms.

Google hurriedly tried to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, the wildly popular large language model chatbot, developed by OpenAI. Google Bard was the firm's response to OpenAI's offering and the company held a launch event to unveil it. In comparison to Google Translate, Google Bard was seen as less advanced, more error-prone and lacking in important functions like generative coding.

However, in recent months, the program has made significant advancements and it is now competitive with ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Google has a lot of things it can draw upon for inspiration and the most recent is the addition of Google Lens support in Bard.

As the generative AI industry is rapidly innovating, it is leading to a highly competitive AI race between the big names in technology.
 
So, how is Google maintaining its edge over the competition?

While Sergey Brin and Larry Page retain complete control of Google through their voting power, they have adopted a somewhat hands-off attitude to the company for quite some time. Sergey Brin, who has been rumored to be helping Google with its artificial intelligence (AI) endeavors, such as ChatGPT’s competitor Google Bard, has been showing up at Google offices considerably more often recently. Larry Page appears to be sticking to his hands-off approach.

The WSJ writes (using unnamed sources) that ever since the massive buzz surrounding ChatGPT began in the latter half of last year, Sergey Brin has been regularly visiting Google headquarters on the order of three to four days per week. The co-creator is heavily involved with the artificial intelligence (AI) team developing the next-generation AI model Gemini, which is expected to surpass existing market leaders such as ChatGPT.

Since the company lost many of its major researchers in this field, Sergey Brin is mostly leveraging his position to aid in the hiring process by choosing a few crucial employees. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet apparently isn't worried about the increased participation.

Some current and former employees told the WSJ that the founder had ignored AI for years. He apparently had to get up to speed on recent advancements and later stated publicly that he had missed out on Google's Brain division's pioneering work in the area of artificial intelligence.
 
With one of its A-listers back in the office, can Google's AI empire finally achieve victory? Or will quick-moving competitors take the lead? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!