Big Tech competitors are racing against one another to develop the best uses of new artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Key Details
- For years, every major tech company has been building an AI program, however, the explosive growth of OpenAI’s AI chatbot ChatGPT has nearly every company scrambling to recalibrate.
- ChatGPT’s success has changed users’ expectations of AI. Users now expect an AI to be capable of producing original text and images in response to user commands.
- OpenAI’s new tech was essentially an overnight success, with some estimates suggesting that ChatGPT has nearly 100 million monthly users, The New York Times reports.
- Microsoft has a head start on AI as a long-time investor in OpenAI. Last week, the company released a premium version of Teams that includes AI tools for translation, organization, and summarizing meeting notes.
- The computer software developer is also expected to incorporate ChatGPT into its search engine Bing, potentially becoming a strong competitor against Google.
- Alphabet, or Google, has long been working on technology similar to ChatGTP, but the company has maintained a more cautious approach. OpenAI’s breakthrough reportedly caused CEO Sundar Pichai to declare a “code red,” indicating the company may be less conservative moving forward.
- AI usage is nothing new to Facebook or its parent company Meta. AI has previously moderated content on the social-media site and organized News Feed items.
- However, Meta’s recent demonstrations of its generative AI Blenderbot were not well received.
- In a recent earnings call with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, AI was discussed more than Zuckerberg’s metaverse. Some experts suggest that Meta could use generative AI to create the virtual worlds in the metaverse, Axios reports.
- Amazon and Apple are less involved in the generative AI technology race. Amazon already uses AI to run its factories smoothly and develop Alexa’s voice recognition system.
- As usual for the secretive company, Apple hasn’t let much information slip about its plans for AI. In Apple’s recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook spoke to the potential for AI to detect heart rhythms and car crashes—a different approach than most companies are taking.
Why it’s news
Generative AI breakthroughs have the potential to reshape the way users interact with the internet. Microsoft has a head start on other tech companies due to its partnership with OpenAI. Competitors need to keep moving to stay relevant in a quickly changing playing field.
AI tech is already well-integrated into users’ everyday lives. Spam filters on your inbox, voice-to-text texting options, and Facebook’s News Feed are just a few of the everyday examples. Generative AI, however, is a relatively new accomplishment.
Right now, the possibilities of technology like ChatGPT seem endless, but experts still aren’t sure about all the benefits AI could actually provide. There are still plenty of downsides, as AI can still make mistakes and even be programmed with built-in bias.
