Google Search to get GPT-style conversational AI: Sundar Pichai

Shortly after Microsoft showcased ChatGPT before the world, Google unveiled its own large language model (LLM)-based AI called Bard. Since then, Microsoft has integrated Bard in its search engine, Bing. It has also opened a more advanced version of the original ChatGPT to the public, including people in India. Google, on the other hand, has started opening access to Bard selectively. And while it has already mentioned that it will be bringing Bard to its flagship product, Google Search, ‘soon’, the exact use-cases and timeline remains unclear for now. But now, Alphabet Inc and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has revealed what exactly the company has in mind for Bard and Search.

In an interview with The WallStreet Journal, Pichai revealed that Google plans to bring a GPT-style conversational AI to Google Search. “Will people be able to ask questions to Google and engage with LLMs in the context of search? Absolutely,” Google CEO said in the interview.

He also said that Google is testing a number of different ways using which LLMs can be integrated into search. One approach that the company is mulling would allow users to ask follow-up questions to their original queries. But there is much research to be done before a more calibrated solution its revealed before the public.

When asked why Google didn’t release a chatbot earlier, Pichai said that the company always planned to do so but it was waiting for the right moment. “We were iterating to ship something, and maybe timelines changed, given the moment in the industry,” he said.

During the conversation, he also dismissed the fact that growth of artificial intelligence (AI), especially in forms like ChatGPT and Bard, hurt its core advertising business and Search, which accounts for a major chunk of the company’s revenues. “The opportunity space, if anything, is bigger than before,” he said.

Going forward, the Alphabet Inc CEO expects technology, particularly AI-based models, to become for accessible even for smaller companies and developers and useful for the end users.