CNN
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Shares of Google-parent Alphabet fell greater than 3% in early buying and selling Monday after a report sparked considerations that its core search engine might lose market share to AI-powered rivals, together with Microsoft’s Bing.
Final month, Google staff realized that Samsung was weighing making Bing the default search engine on its units as a substitute of Google’s search engine, prompting a “panic” inside the corporate, based on a report from the New York Instances, citing inner messages and paperwork. (CNN has not reviewed the fabric.)
In an effort to deal with the heightened competitors, Google is claimed to be creating a brand new AI-powered search engine known as Undertaking “Magi,” based on the Instances. The corporate, which reportedly has about 160 individuals engaged on the challenge, goals to alter the best way outcomes seem in Google Search and can embody an AI chat device out there to reply questions. The challenge is anticipated to be unveiled to the general public subsequent month, based on the report.
In an announcement despatched to CNN, Google spokesperson Lara Levin mentioned the corporate has been utilizing AI for years to “enhance the standard of our outcomes” and “provide completely new methods to go looking,” together with with a function rolled out final yr that lets customers search by combining photographs and phrases.
“We’ve performed so in a accountable and useful approach that maintains the excessive bar we set for delivering high quality data,” Levin mentioned. “Not each brainstorm deck or product thought results in a launch, however as we’ve mentioned earlier than, we’re enthusiastic about bringing new AI-powered options to Search, and can share extra particulars quickly.”
Samsung didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Google’s search engine has dominated the marketplace for 20 years. However the viral success of ChatGPT, which may generate compelling written responses to person prompts, appeared to place Google on protection for the primary time in years.
In March, Google started opening up entry to Bard, its new AI chatbot device that instantly competes with ChatGPT and guarantees to assist customers define and write essay drafts, plan a good friend’s child bathe, and get lunch concepts primarily based on what’s within the fridge.
At an occasion in February, a Google govt additionally mentioned the corporate will carry “the magic of generative AI” instantly into its core search product and use synthetic intelligence to pave the best way for the “subsequent frontier of our data merchandise.”
Microsoft, in the meantime, has invested in and partnered with OpenAI, the corporate behind ChatGPT, to deploy related know-how in Bing and different productiveness instruments. Different tech corporations, together with Meta, Baidu and IBM, in addition to a slew of startups, are racing to develop and deploy AI-powered instruments.
However tech corporations face dangers in embracing this know-how, which is understood to make errors and “hallucinate” responses. That’s notably true on the subject of search engines like google, a product that many use to search out correct and dependable data.
Google was known as out after a demo of Bard offered an inaccurate response to a query a couple of telescope. Shares of Google’s dad or mum firm Alphabet fell 7.7% that day, wiping $100 billion off its market worth.
Microsoft’s Bing AI demo was additionally known as out for a number of errors, together with an obvious failure to distinguish between the sorts of vacuums and even made up details about sure merchandise.
In an interview with 60 Minutes that aired on Sunday, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai harassed the necessity for corporations to “be accountable in every step alongside the best way” as they construct and launch AI instruments.
For Google, he mentioned, meaning permitting time for “person suggestions” and ensuring the corporate “can develop extra strong security layers earlier than we construct, earlier than we deploy extra succesful fashions.”
He additionally expressed his perception that these AI instruments will in the end have broad impacts on companies, professions and society.
“That is going to affect each product throughout each firm and in order that’s, that’s why I feel it’s a really, very profound know-how,” he mentioned. “And so, we’re simply in early days.”
