Ever since the reveal of ChatGPT, many companies have either tried to buy rights to the software or make one of their own. It’s interesting to see how first movers such as ChatGPT can affect an entire market. Tech giants such as Microsoft and Google have been scrambling to create a chatbot of their own and I think it is essential to look at what other competition ChatGPT has so we can have an idea of how AI in the future will look. When it comes to industries such as artificial intelligence, I feel as if it’s necessary for products to be differentiated in order to target various consumers and their specific needs. I’m excited to see how tech companies will implement it into the designs of their own chatbots and if they don’t will ChatGPT remain the status quo?
As one of the prevailing tech companies, it is only right that Google has a prototype cooking to take the market by storm. One benefit that I would say Google has that helps place them over OpenAI is that they have extreme brand loyalty. If Google has a chatbot of its own, who would you rather use? I’m sure that your answer was Google simply because of your familiarity with them and their products. Now let’s get into the details, Google’s conversational chatbot is named Bard AI and they are preparing to launch soon. At first, the software won’t be available to the public because decided to first beta test in order to work out any kinks. Google was able to sniff out which functions ChatGPT is lacking and installed them in their own project. For example, Bard will be able to voice their finding to people of different demographics such as a 50-year-old vs a 9-year-old. In fact, I just learned that they are also conducting rigorous internal testing within their product teams in order to make sure that Bard’s rollout is as smooth as possible.
Microsoft
Microsoft decided to take a different approach to its development of artificial intelligence. I am sure that you are familiar with Bing, if not it is Microsoft’s search engine which was released in the year 2009. Instead of making a chatbot like all other companies, Microsoft was able to integrate its search engine with AI which is pretty interesting when you look at the functionalities of the software. They have also been able to enhance their Edge web browser with AI which is spectacular as they are the first large company to do so. The value they are trying to communicate is the fluidity that their web browsers will now offer to their consumers. They have released a few official demos for the public to see which show AI annotations beside the search bar in order to help the user identify the answer they are looking for by asking questions and talking to the chatbot. A fun fact is that the technology runs on the same technology that ChatGPT uses, although it’s an upgraded version. I just recently learned that Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI which gives them licenses to the software that ChatGPT uses. Microsoft was able to use its influence and capital in its favor and now has built upon ChatGPT to make a product of its own. Will this advantage help them beat out Google’s new bot?
What will the future look like?
I love when there are huge developments that shock the public because I believe that it marks the start of a new era. Just as the Google search engine was a spearhead in tech, ChatGPT is a spearhead in artificial intelligence. We have come across a bot that can create essays, emit facts off current events, and even code projects if we give it the requirements to satisfy. Now colleges are worried for their students due to a concern for cheating, but can we really call it that? Nonetheless, multiple institutions of higher education have already addressed the problem through syllabi and other resources. What motivation will students have to go and seek out information for their projects and assignments when they have software that will do the task for them in a timely manner? This has prompted the creation of tech that can discern ChatGPT from a human being’s own work. The key method being used in some of the developments of the tech is looking for keywords that have occurred in multiple outputs of the software.
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