As it stands, we are officially entering the new era of technology that is blooming with the vast and advanced use of artificial intelligence. The modern world that we are already used to is set to embark onto another phase of progression, one that is unprecedented and unpredictable in many ways, with AI chatbots from various technology juggernauts eager to take the world by storm.
ChatGPT, the mighty AI chatbot that can do literally everything, was developed and launched by OpenAI, the American artificial intelligence (AI) research laboratory that was co-founded by Elon Musk and Microsoft in November 2022. Its emergence immediately revolutionised how every corporation and people manage their business and operate their daily lives, hyping companies, small and large, to reform their related services, especially to automate one of the most important components in the commerce industry, the customer service department.
Obviously, other tech giants are not going to do nothing on the rise of OpenAI and Microsoft’s chatbot, as companies like Google and Baidu, had already taken on the challenge to programme their own chatbot to meet the competition ignited by ChatGPT. Nonetheless, Google, the American multinational technology company too faced another obstacle set by Microsoft, after the latter released its AI-powered Bing that could beat Google’s topmost money-making tool, Google Search.
ChatGPT, Meet Bard and Ernie
OpenAI’s powerful chatbot is capable of doing numerous tasks, namely writing computer codes, generating humanistic contents in different genres and forms, translations to any languages in the world, streamlining the onboarding process of companies and many more. Therefore, it is only fair that these groundbreaking features allow the AI tool, which is acting on steroids, to attract the fast-growing user base all across the Internet, and spurring Microsoft to invest an enormous amount of $10 billion on the mother company, OpenAI.
To counter the new wave of tech innovation, OpenAI and Microsoft’s competitors decided to launch their own version of chatbots, namely Google’s Bard and Chinese Baidu’s Ernie. For Bard particularly, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai had stressed that the chatbot is the utmost priority the tech giant focuses on at the moment, and that tells you how much of a threat ChatGPT is posting on the company who dominated the tech industry for decades. The AI-powered product by Google, is currently under testing and will be introduced to the public once simulations are completed. Nevertheless, just when Google thought they have come up with an outstanding countermeasure to defeat ChatGPT, a recent Bard hiccup occurred before a Google presentation had made Alphabet Inc lose $100 billion in its market value. Ouch!
As for Google’s Chinese counterpart, Baidu is about to finish testing its priced Ernie by March and it will be launched within a similar timeframe. As we all know, ChatGPT and many essential Google services are not permitted to operate in China, hence it would only be wise for the 1.4 billion Chinese citizens to have relatable accesses to such revolutionary AI tools in the country, and that is the idea Ernie based on. According to insider news, Baidu reportedly has been working on Ernie since 2019, and the release of news regarding the chatbot instantly skyrocketed Baidu’s stock price, with a substantial growth of 13%, their highest in over a year.
ChatGPT’s Fightback
Well, the competition has been pretty much heated up by OpenAI and Microsoft’s direct challengers in the market. And what is their response? An AI-powered search engine of Bing’s.
Now, we all know Google Search is everyone’s most-used search engine of all-time due to its accessibility and convenience, accounting for 97% of the global search engine market while Bing, on the other hand, had always been the second best at most in this regard, with only a mere 3% of the same market recorded. But if you think Google Search’s status quo could not be touched or even overcome, think again.
When a search engine like Bing is powered by AI, its function is magnified and folded to become a huge search box. Besides, the superb collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI will see ChatGPT’s functions in the AI-backed Bing. In other words, users will get personalised results whenever they key in a specific instruction or question, with the option of different tones of writing tools available to generate desired contents via the AI button available in the page section.
Furthermore, Bing’s effort to provide users with refreshing outlooks and user interface that will be changed automatically from time to time deserves a nod since its competitor Google has been known to have dull homepages unless during a special occasion where animations will be inserted to honour a certain festival or icon. The enticing backdrop of Bing’s could be a beautiful mountain or visual of a coloured sky, and such a slight twist could also be key for Bing to knock down the Goliath in the search engine market.
Satya Nadella: “I Want People to Know We Made Google to Act.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that his partners and team had already ignited the race of the best search engine under the new era and welcomed their peers to up their game and defy the standards set by them. If anything, the world we know today will be filled with more and more game changers in the future, when every giant in the globe is competing against each other to offer state-of-the-art tech models.
Now, with everything said, a million-dollar question for you here: Who will win it all in the war of chatbots and search engines?
