Google develops AI rival Gemini to challenge ChatGPT

Google has been working hard to develop a chatbot that can compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT. This effort began as a response to the growing popularity of ChatGPT, which led Google to take immediate action. The project, called Bard, was led by Sissie Hsiao, a Google veteran with over 16 years of experience. In December 2022, she was given the task of creating the chatbot. The urgency for this project increased when Microsoft integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. Initially, Bard faced several challenges, including providing incorrect information and making inappropriate responses. Despite these problems, Google executives like Sundar Pichai pushed the team to work quickly. To manage expectations, they referred to Bard as an “experiment” while making ongoing improvements. In 2023, Google combined its AI research teams, DeepMind and Google Brain, to develop a new model called Gemini. This new AI showed strong performance in tests, even surpassing ChatGPT in some areas. However, early in 2024, Google encountered issues with Gemini, particularly with generating images accurately. This led to a temporary halt of that feature. There were also criticisms surrounding Gemini's performance, with some calling its outputs "unacceptable." Elon Musk voiced concerns over AI that promotes diversity, labeling it as "woke AI." Despite these controversies, many analysts believe Google is still in a strong position in the AI market, thanks to its diverse offerings in cloud services, search, and YouTube.