After six years without conflict, Microsoft and Google are about to go to battle over the future of artificial intelligence (AI).
Back in February, Microsoft detailed plans about bringing OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot to Bing not shortly after Google rushed to announce Gemini, previously Bard, a ChatGPT rival just before. Microsoft is aiming for a future of search engines with more humanlike responses as opposed to short, simple answers. After years of Google’s search dominance, Microsoft embedding ChatGPT inside Bing and making it available for users to test could be extremely threatening. Moreover, Bing’s chat functionality to rumored to be based on GPT-4, an update to the current GPT-3.5 that was released last year.
Google has invested $300 million in Anthropic, an AI firm founded by previous researchers at OpenAI. Google has developed Gemini, an AI chatbot built using Google’s LaMDA technology which is similar to OpenAI’s language models.
Over the course of the incredible technological advancements of the past few decades, Microsoft and Google have been known to go head-to-head with each other. Ultimately a truce was reached in 2015 to avoid legal battles and to attempt to foster cooperation, though this truce expired in April 2021.
Both Microsoft and Google have expressed the importance of being on top of the most advanced AI models in this next wave of computing.
Microsoft is also working on Azure OpenAI, its service that allows businesses to integrate tools into their own cloud applications with the promise that ChatGPT will be available on the platform soon. OpenAI could give Microsoft a serious advantage in the AI battles to come.
Read the full article from the Verge here.
