When a little-known startup called OpenAI released an artificially intelligent chatbot, it was a landmark moment that ushered in the current AI era.
But what was the “ChatGPT moment” for Google, a long-established big tech company that has been working on its AI products for years?
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet, spoke about his reaction to the release of ChatGPT in a Thursday speech at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual technology event.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff asked Pichai about how Google, which Google described at the time as the “absolute leader in AI,” saw “a little San Francisco company called OpenAI rise up with this product, ChatGPT.”
Pichai said Google has already made significant progress with its AI products, including an internal version of its chatbot.
“But you’re right, because of OpenAI, they put it out there first,” he said.
When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, it was backed by Google rival Microsoft and was largely seen as a major challenge to Google’s dominance in the AI field. The New York Times reported that Google executives issued a “Code Red” and Pichai redirected multiple teams to focus on AI efforts.
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In a conversation with Benioff, Pichai compared that moment to others he’s witnessed in the consumer internet space. For example, in 2006 when Google was working on video search and YouTube “came out of nowhere,” or when Facebook became popular with photos in its feed and then Instagram came along. (Google later acquired YouTube and Facebook acquired Instagram.)
“We knew that in a different world, we probably would have launched a chatbot a few months later,” Pichai said. “We weren’t quite at the point where we could put it out there yet, and people would have been okay with Google putting that product out there. We still had a lot of problems back then.”
He also said that Google had already invested heavily in AI, from its research team to its own chip production and infrastructure, and was already in a good position when ChatGPT was released.
“For me, when ChatGPT launched, I was excited to see that things had changed, contrary to what people on the outside felt,” he said.
Shortly after ChatGPT’s launch, Pichai said that Google would not release a competing chatbot product right away because it would pose a greater “reputational risk” than OpenAI.
In March 2023, Google released a chatbot. Initially called Bard, the name was later changed to Gemini.
