Google Inc CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.
Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images
Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees on Monday that the company needed all hands on deck to test Bard, its new ChatGPT rival. He also said that the company will soon enlist the help of partners to test an API that will let them access the same underlying technology.
The internal memo came shortly after Pichai publicly announced Google’s AI-powered conversation technology, which will be rolled out in the coming weeks. Google has faced pressure from investors and employees to compete with ChatGPT, a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI that took people by storm when it launched late last year.
“Next week, we’ll enlist every Googler to help shape Bard and contribute through special company-wide dogfood,” Pichai wrote in an email to employees seen by CNBC. “We look forward to receiving all your feedback – in the spirit of an internal hackathon – more details coming soon.”
Pichai’s note to employees also said that search boss Prabhakar Raghavan would “share progress” at an event in Paris later this week.
The internal note comes shortly after Pichai told the public in a blog post that Bard’s responses will need to be rigorously vetted to ensure they meet the “high bar for quality, security and groundiness in real-world information”. .
Last week, CNBC reported that the Alphabet-owned company was enlisting employees to prioritize several AI projects as part of a “code red” effort to respond to AI competition, including a chatbot code-named ” Apprentice Bard” and new search features. Both were confirmed through the company’s blog post on Monday.
Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a version of its own search engine Bing that will use ChatGPT to answer users’ search queries. Microsoft is holding its own event on Tuesday with the participation of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“It’s early days, we need to ship and iterate and we have a long time to go to build these technologies into our products and bring the best of Google AI to improve people’s lives,” Pichai wrote in his Monday note. It’s a tough and exciting job.” Employee. “We are pursuing this effort with an intensity and focus that reminds me of early Google – so thank you to everyone who contributed.”
Pichai also talked about letting outsiders build their own apps and products using the same underlying technology, Language Model for Dialogic Applications (or LaMDA), through an API or application programming interface.
“Over the next month, we will begin onboarding individual developers, creators, and enterprises to initially try out the Generative Language API (Application Programming Interface) powered by LaMDA,” Pichai’s email said. “Over time, we aim to build a suite of tools and APIs that will make it easier for others to build more innovative applications with Al.”
A Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the internal note.
