CNN
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Shares of Google-parent Alphabet fell greater than 3% in early buying and selling Monday after a report sparked issues that its core search engine might lose market share to AI-powered rivals, together with Microsoft’s Bing.
Final month, Google workers discovered that Samsung was weighing making Bing the default search engine on its gadgets as an alternative of Google’s search engine, prompting a “panic” inside the corporate, based on a report from the New York Occasions, citing inside messages and paperwork. (CNN has not reviewed the fabric.)
In an effort to handle the heightened competitors, Google is claimed to be growing a brand new AI-powered search engine known as Challenge “Magi,” based on the Occasions. The corporate, which reportedly has about 160 folks engaged on the challenge, goals to alter the way in which outcomes seem in Google Search and can embody an AI chat instrument obtainable 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 stated the corporate has been utilizing AI for years to “enhance the standard of our outcomes” and “provide solely new methods to look,” together with with a function rolled out final yr that lets customers search by combining photos and phrases.
“We’ve executed so in a accountable and useful manner that maintains the excessive bar we set for delivering high quality data,” Levin stated. “Not each brainstorm deck or product concept results in a launch, however as we’ve stated 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 instrument that straight competes with ChatGPT and guarantees to assist customers define and write essay drafts, plan a buddy’s child bathe, and get lunch concepts based mostly on what’s within the fridge.
At an occasion in February, a Google government additionally stated the corporate will carry “the magic of generative AI” straight into its core search product and use synthetic intelligence to pave the way in which 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 expertise in Bing and different productiveness instruments. Different tech firms, together with Meta, Baidu and IBM, in addition to a slew of startups, are racing to develop and deploy AI-powered instruments.
However tech firms face dangers in embracing this expertise, which is understood to make errors and “hallucinate” responses. That’s significantly true in the case of search engines like google, a product that many use to seek out correct and dependable data.
Google was known as out after a demo of Bard supplied an inaccurate response to a query a few telescope. Shares of Google’s mother or father 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 forms 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 confused the necessity for firms to “be accountable in every step alongside the way in which” as they construct and launch AI instruments.
For Google, he stated, meaning permitting time for “person suggestions” and ensuring the corporate “can develop extra sturdy security layers earlier than we construct, earlier than we deploy extra succesful fashions.”
He additionally expressed his perception that these AI instruments will finally 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 expertise,” he stated. “And so, we’re simply in early days.”
