Report: Google execs view ChatGPT AI as an existential threat and are ordering teams to develop competing AI products

According to a report by New York TimesGoogle’s management, including CEO Sundar Pichai, sees the popular artificial intelligence ChatGPT as a potential existential threat to their business model and has redirected resources to AI programming to counter the threat.

ChatGPT was released to the public by OpenAI last November and had over 1 million users less than a week after its launch. For comparison, popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify all took several months to hit the million user mark.

ChatGPT has a number of potential features, but the one that gives Google an immediate concern is its ability to provide realistic, conversational answers to the kinds of questions that might otherwise be typed into a search engine like Google.

Currently, it is believed that ChatGPT’s error rate when responding to such requests is too high to completely oust Google’s dominance of internet search, but as technology improves, Google realizes that they have a real problem ahead of them, so the times report. The threat is serious enough that Pichai has reportedly personally attended several meetings centered around Google’s AI strategy and Google’s response to the ChatGPT threat.

A former Google executive explained this Business Insider This widespread use of ChatGPT could prevent users from seeing Google ads, which accounted for over 80% of total revenue for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, in 2021.

According to the TImes report, numerous Google departments have been ordered to shift gears to help develop AI products to compete with ChatGPT and DALL-E, OpenAI’s AI art-making product.

Google has not responded to a request for comment on the Times report.