Sundar Pichai opens up about launching OpenAI's ChatGPT ahead of Google's chatbot, compared to YouTube, Instagram

OpenAI launched its chatbot ChatGPT in 2022, ushering in a new AI era. This left behind tech giants like Google, which had been working on artificial intelligence technology for years. What was Google’s response to OpenAI releasing ChatGPT before its chatbot Gemini? CEO of Google and its parent company, Alphabet, Sundar Pichai recently shared his reaction to the release of ChatGPT at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual technology event, on Thursday. What did Sundar Pichai say? “But you’re right, credit to OpenAI, they put it out there first,” a report by Business Insider quoted Pichai. Pichai’s comments came as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff questioned the response of Google, which he called the “absolute leader in AI” at the time, when “this little company in San Francisco called OpenAI came up with this product ChatGPT.” The Google CEO mentioned that the company has already made enough progress with AI products, including an in-house version of a chatbot. “Credit to OpenAI, they put it out there first,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai Comparison with YouTube and Instagram Pichai further compared the timing of ChatGPT’s launch to others he has observed in the consumer internet sector. For example, when Google developed video search in 2006, YouTube “came out of nowhere,” Facebook became popular among photos in its feed, and then Instagram appeared, the report said. Google bought YouTube, and Facebook later bought Instagram. “We knew in a different world we probably would have launched our chatbot a few months later,” Pichai said. “We hadn’t quite gotten it to a level where you could put it out and people would have been fine with Google putting that product out. It still had a lot of issues at that point,” he added. Sundar Pichai flags reputational risks Pichai said Google had already invested heavily in AI, including its research teams and manufacturing its own chips and infrastructure, and that it was well positioned when ChatGPT was released. After ChatGPT’s launch, however, Pichai said Google would not immediately release a chatbot competitor because it posed greater “reputational risk” than OpenAI. Launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, it was backed by Microsoft, a rival of Google, and was seen as a major challenge for Google in the artificial intelligence sector. Meanwhile, Google management issued a “code red” and the CEO redirected several teams to focus on AI, the New York Times reports. Google released its chatbot, initially named and later renamed Gemini, in March 2023.