Google CEO Sundar Pichai says AI will 'absolutely' become part of Search

(Image: AFP)

Tech giant Google may not have set a date for integrating AI into Search but CEO Sundar Pichai has promised it will happen, as the company faces the biggest threat to its dominance from Microsoft, which has had a head start with Bing.

In an interview to The Wall Street Journal, Pichai said the search and technology giant would add conversational AI to Google Search.

“Will people be able to ask questions to Google and engage with LLMs in the context of search? Absolutely,” said Pichai, referring to large language models which form the foundation of machine learning and are at the heart of the AI battle.

Google’s online search business faces its biggest test in decades. Microsoft has stolen the march by partnering with OpenAI to exclusively use its GPT language models, which power the hugely popular ChatGPT chatbot.

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Microsoft has already integrated the technology into its Bing search engine, even including an AI-based Image Generator.

Pichai, however, dismissed concerns that rivals posed a threat to Google's core business. Rivals had given the company bigger opportunities, he said. “The opportunity space, if anything, is bigger than before,” Pichai said.

Talking about Google's chatbot Bard, which is yet to gain traction, Pichai told WSJ it "has seen incredible" user excitement around "adoption of these technologies, and some of that is a pleasant surprise as well".

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Bard has got a lukewarm reception, so far, with many criticising it for not being as efficient or accurate as ChatGPT or Bing's  AI avatar.

When asked why Google didn't release an AI chatbot earlier, Pichai said the company was "iterating to ship something, and maybe timelines changed, given the moment in the industry".