Alphabet’s Google has remained dominant in search, powered by its signature PageRank algorithm, which measures each website’s importance by the way other sites linked to it. But a handful of startups, some founded by former Googlers, believe that search is about to change dramatically as a result of the rise of AI.
Those companies are trying to replace keyword search with large language models that can understand user questions and produce answers in writing. The most popular such model is ChatGPT, a wildly popular artificial intelligence chatbot that was launched by a company called OpenAI in late 2017.
It can respond to queries about a range of topics like political science and computer programming with detailed explanations in seconds. And because it works in a question-and-answer format, users can drill down into its answers to get a fuller understanding of what they are asking for.
This kind of question-and-answer conversational AI has a lot to offer, and it could be a big threat to search engines in the future. As you might have guessed, Google has been concerned about ChatGPT since it first started making headlines a month ago.
CEO Sundar Pichai and AI research head Jeff Dean have both asked employees to focus on ChatGPT and related technologies, according to media reports. They have reportedly declared it a “code red” threat to the company’s core business and enlisted top researchers across Google to tackle ChatGPT.
The Google team is testing a new chatbot for employees and experimenting with a new search desktop design that allows workers to enter a question in a dialog box and receive a text answer. These efforts are similar to ChatGPT, which was developed by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based company backed by Microsoft.
Unlike other chatbots, however, it doesn’t incorporate data from the web into its answers. That could mean it might not be accurate, and could also lead to embarrassing or hate-speech retorts.
But ChatGPT does make the process of researching questions about anything from political science to coding more enjoyable, and less painful, than it would be on Google. Moreover, the fact that it can deliver a surprisingly accurate response in a matter of seconds means that it could be a real competitor to the search giant in the future.
As a result of the surge in popularity, Google is now testing new chatbots and search products that might influence a future public product launch, CNBC has learned. Some of the experiments include a search desktop that offers five different prompts for potential questions directly under the main search bar, as well as a small chat logo inside the far right end of the search bar.
Employees also have been testing a beta LaMDA chatbot that asks questions in a similar manner to ChatGPT. One document viewed by CNBC features side-by-side examples of how both chatbots responded to different prompts, such as a question about hiring. And it’s believed that the Google teams are also working on a new, more advanced version of ChatGPT.