Google appears to have something of a surprise for us as it announced an "emergency" event. They didn't disclose much except that it is about using the power of AI to "reimagine how people search for, explore and interact with information," which makes for a more natural and intuitive search engine.
Google's Potential ChatBot
Surmising from the provided information, Google might be creating something to match ChatGPT, which is reportedly being integrated into Bing. The event will be live on YouTube and will go on for around 40 minutes. You can watch it on February 8th.
Alphabet also held an earnings call, wherein the parent company's CEO Sundar Pichai said that people will be interacting directly with their newest, most powerful language models to assist with searching for information in "experimental and innovative ways."
Google already has a foundation to work with given its preexisting technology. They already have a chatbot language known as "LaMDA" which stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications. The company also holds an image-generating AI that goes by "Imagen."
According to Ars Technica, Google is already testing out a chatbot called "Apprentice Bard," a chatbot that uses the LaMDA technology that is not yet released to the public. People use it to ask questions and receive detailed answers the way ChatGPt operates.
Code Red
ChatGPT has been gaining popularity for its impressive performance, so much so that Google has declared a "code red" and asked for the help of retired co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The company might be worried since it could lead people away from its search engine.
It could be a legitimate reason to start creating something to compete given the growing number of users that OpenAI, which is responsible for ChatGPT, is getting. That, or they could be scrambling for answers that they shouldn't even worry about in the first place.
The company once worried that Facebook was becoming a competitor in terms of a social network, resulting in them creating Google+. We all know how that turned out, and not knowing what happened to it just shows that it did not take off the way it wanted it to.
There's also the attempt at entering the ring with Google Express, an online shopping service meant to compete with Amazon Prime. The company painted its closing as a part of its plans to "redesign" its approach to online shopping, as mentioned by TechCrunch.
It has been merged with Google Shopping, where they also added new advertising options for brands and online sellers at the time. Still, it appears like Google was not able to build an online shopping presence big enough to even be a threat to the retail giant, Amazon.
It's also entirely possible that the event has nothing to do with a new chatbot at all. This is all just speculation until the company does hold the event. According to The Verge, it might be associated with already existing tools like Google Lens, Translate, Shopping, and Maps.
