The race to develop AI chatbots and AI-supported search engines is getting more heated up as Chinese tech giants, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu are entering into a race with their western competitors, Google and Microsoft to develop highly advanced artificial intelligence chatbots.
Over the past few days, major multinational tech conglomerates have announced their plans to develop and launch AI chatbots which would revolutionize the way humans interact with technology and the internet.
Realizing the fact that the future of search engine technology lies in Artificial Intelligence and such new-age technologies, companies are on a war footing to develop highly advanced AI systems and chatbots.
ChatGPT trigger
Even though discussions and debates regarding artificial intelligence, AI chatbots, and search engines powered by AI have been around for a long time, the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 changed the dynamics of the entire AI sector. ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool developed by San Francisco-based AI research laboratory, OpenAI.
Since its launch in 2022, ChatGPT became a major talking point on the internet as the AI chatbot was able to execute various activities such as content creation, content analysis, image captioning, coding, etc. Due to its ability to do various types of activities using vast amounts of data, ChatGPT became an instant hit.
School and university students, professionals, programmers, and creators all started using the AI chatbot to increase their efficiency and speed.
Prioritizing AI development amidst economic downturns
As ChatGPT started to trend worldwide, multinational tech conglomerates who had already started working on their AI programs and systems decided to increase the speed of research and development. Several tech giants have been pushing billions of dollars into the research and development of AI systems for the past 5 to 6 years.
Despite large-scale investments, the AI systems developed by these companies were inadequate in numerous ways such as the inability to process large queries, additional queries, accuracy, speed, etc. The launch of ChatGPT forced companies to rethink their AI strategy.
It is important to note that all these are happening amidst an economic crisis that has forced companies around the globe to lay off thousands of employees as part of cost cuts.
Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI and the new Bing
A few weeks ago, American software giant, Microsoft decided to invest nearly 10 billion dollars in OpenAI, the developer, and operator of ChatGPT. This investment was highly significant as Microsoft will get access to ChatGPT which can later be integrated into Bing, a search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The software giant had 2019 invested 1 billion dollars in the AI research laboratory.
As expected, a few weeks after the announcement regarding a multi-billion dollar investment deal, Microsoft announced a new version of the Bing search engine, powered by an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT. During the event, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella said that the AI technology used with the new Bing search engine is much more advanced and powerful than ChatGPT.
The Bing search engine of Microsoft and its cross-platform web browser Microsoft Edge witnessed a massive increase in its downloads and user base as netizens are waiting for the company to release newer versions of software soon. Its cloud platform Azure is helping Microsoft manage faster developments in the area allowing large-scale integration and worldwide release of newer software technologies.
Google replies with Bard AI
A few hours after the announcement by Microsoft that it will soon release a newer Bing search engine powered by an AI system, Silicon Valley tech giant Google announced its own brand-new AI system, Bard AI. Bard is an AI system powered by Google’s language model LaMDA ( Language Model for Dialogue Applications).
“Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner,” wrote CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog post.
Launch Day Mishap of Bard AI
In the blog post announcing the new AI system, Google gave an example of using Bard AI to simplify complex topics, like explaining discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old. To this topic related to discoveries from James Webb Space Telescope, the AI chatbot gave three replies out of which one was that the telescope was the first to take pictures of a planet outside the earth’s solar system. This was inaccurate as European Very Large Telescope was the first telescope the first to take pictures of a planet outside the earth’s solar system in 2004.
The launch day mishap of Bard AI was a massive setback for Google as the company lost 100 billion dollars in the share market. Several tech pundits declared the victory of Microsoft in AI.
Even though Microsoft seems to have achieved a lead in the first phase of AI wars, Google still could win the war with large-scale investment, research, and development into Bard AI. Massive dominance of Google search engine in the search market also gives Google an advantageous position against Microsoft in the race to develop AI supported search engine.
Chinese Companies Enter AI Development Race
As Microsoft and Google kicked off the AI wars AI-powered by Bing and Bard AI, Chinese multinational tech giants such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent have made their intentions clear.
Beijing-based Chinese web services company Baidu revealed that the beta testing of its AI chatbot “Ernie Bot” will be completed by March 2023. Even though the company did not informally announce the launch date of the new AI system, various reports suggest that Ernie Bot will be superior to ChatGPT with the ability to do numerous activities which ChatGPT cannot.
Ernie Bot is powered by Ernie, an AI-powered language model that can understand language by learning from data. Ernie (Enhanced representation through knowledge integration) language model was revealed by Baidu in 2019.
Alibaba, NetEase, and Tencent
Another Chinese tech giant, Alibaba said on 8th February that it is currently working on its own AI system which is undergoing various phases of testing. The company did not reveal information regarding features or the name of the AI system. Alibaba has been working on generative AI and further systems in the AI sector since the founding of its AI research arm in 2017.
On the same day of Alibaba’s announcement, Chinese gaming firm NetEase said that a subsidiary of its, Youdao has been working on generative AI.
On Wednesday, NetEase, one of China’s largest gaming firms, said that its education subsidiary Youdao has been working on generative AI. A spokesperson told CNBC that the company is looking at using large language models in some of its education productions. Even though the company did not say when it would launch a ChatGPT rival it disclosed that some of its new products will be announced soon,
Chinese multinational tech conglomerate Tencent holdings also announced that it is researching the ChatGPT-tool technology. The tech giant reiterated that it will continue to invest in AI research based on its current technical reserves in foundation models, machine learning algorithms, and natural language processing.
