Open war for the search engine of the future: why Google and Microsoft have become obsessed with ChatGPT

Web browsers have not changed much in the last two decades. In 2023 that is going to change: the irruption of ChatGPT and conversational chatbots created with artificial intelligence engines has brought about a revolution. One that the big technology companies do not want to miss, although there are those in a greater hurry… and with less (or none).

What’s going on. The appearance of ChatGPT made us realize the potential of this conversational artificial intelligence engine. His natural language and his way of answering all kinds of questions ends up being so attractive that we saw him as a potential ‘Google killer’. ChatGPT has significant limitations to be a real alternative, but several small and large companies have been working on solving them for some time.

Google and its “red code”. The Mountain View company itself was clear from the outset that ChatGPT could change everything. Although the firm had LaMDA to deal with ChatGPT, it preferred not to remove it from the lab so as not to damage its reputation. However, shortly after he activated a “red code” to launch his own alternative to ChatGPT as soon as possible, and after previous rumors yesterday he presented Bard, his own conversational AI that will be available in a few weeks.

Bing’s ChatGPT integration just appeared for me. Replaces the search bar with a composer for natural-language questions pic.twitter.com/NxZ0k9O92C

Owen Yin (@Owen_Yin) February 3, 2023

Also read: 3 Best Alternatives to ChatGPT

Microsoft will integrate ChatGPT into Bing. In Redmond they already invested 1,000 million dollars in 2019 in OpenAI, creators of DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT, and a few weeks ago they went further with that bet and spoke of a “multi-million dollar” investment. At Microsoft they are already preparing the integration of these platforms in several of their software developments, but there is an absolute protagonist here: Microsoft will try to revive Bing and everything indicates that it will do so by integrating ChatGPT into the search engine. Judging by previous leaks, that integration is already ready to debut, thus anticipating the launch of Bard on Google.

Big Tech events to get chest out. The aforementioned Microsoft will offer a special event today and everyone expects it to talk about its alliance with OpenAI and, above all, to launch the new version of Bing with integrated ChatGPT. Google has also organized an event: tomorrow they will tell us about their advances in the field of artificial intelligence and without a doubt they will talk about Bard and the future of searches.

Apple does not want to lose comba. The Cupertino company is not in the battle of the search engines at least not yet but it has already leaked that this month it will host an exclusive event for employees called “AI Summit” at the Steve Jobs Theater. Here Apple’s strategy is much less clear, and in fact its main weapon in this field, Siri, has always been considered inferior to Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

Meta, stop metaverses. It is significant that Meta (formerly Facebook) has neglected an area as important as this and has focused its bet on that metaverse that continues to fail. We don’t know if it ever will, but Mark Zuckerberg at least did recently say that one of the company’s goals is to become a “leader in generative artificial intelligence.” The company has made interesting advances in this area, and it remains to be seen how far it can go in this market.

The little ones also play. Meanwhile, yes, many other startups with a more dynamic structure are trying to take advantage of this fever for generative artificial intelligence. Perplexity AI is, for example, a proposal for an alternative to Google and Bing of a lifetime, a search engine that behaves like an updated ChatGPT and connected to the Internet. Quora has just launched Poe, its own chatbot trained on responses from its site. Neeva is another of the striking alternatives, and while many developers are creating small services that integrate ChatGPT or derived versions to help us solve specific problems. It’s the gold rush. Or rather, ChatGPT fever, and nobody wants to miss it.