Technology: Worried, Google invests $400 mn in ChatGPT’s rival
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Concerned that ChatGPT, the new kid on the technology block, might dislodge it from its leadership position in the search engine ecosystem, Google has invested nearly USD 400 million in the challenger’s rival, Anthropic.
Within weeks of its launch on November 30, 2022, ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer) has taken the world by storm and gathered millions of users. Available in a hundred languages, it is a new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based software tool that allows the user to chat with its AI robot (chatbot), ask questions in a conversational format and get answers in seconds.
The capabilities of ChatGPT are causing alarm among experts. In fact, Gmail developer Paul Buccheit said on Twitter that the tool could bring down search engine giant Google in “a year or two.”
According to media reports, the deal gives Google a stake in Anthropic but does not require the startup to spend the funds buying cloud services from the world’s topmost search engine.
Recently, Microsoft infused billions of dollars in ChatGPT developer OpenAI which is set to soon monetize with a paid professional version. At present, ChatGPT’s paid version is available for USD 42 a month for some early users.
Microsoft is also set to add ChatGPT in Azure cloud services soon, the reports said.
According to reports, Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., has just invested USD 400 million in AI startup Anthropic, which is testing a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
While Google and Anthropic declined to comment on this investment, they separately announced a partnership in which Anthropic will use Google’s cloud computing services. The deal marks the latest alliance between a tech giant and an AI startup as the field of generative AI — technology that can generate text and art in seconds — heats up.
“AI has evolved from academic research to become one of the biggest drivers of technological change, creating new opportunities for growth and improved services across all industries,” Thomas Kurian, Chief Executive Officer of Google Cloud, said in a statement.
“Google Cloud is providing open infrastructure for the next generation of AI startups, and our partnership with Anthropic is a great example of how we’re helping users and businesses tap into the power of reliable and responsible AI.”
Founded in 2021 by former leaders of OpenAI Inc., including siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei, Anthropic AI in January released a limited test of a new chatbot named Claude to rival OpenAI’s wildly popular ChatGPT.
The Google-Anthropic partnership follows a high-profile USD 10 billion investment by Microsoft Corp. in OpenAI, which built on the USD 1 billion the software giant had poured into the AI startup in 2019, plus another round in 2021.
Such alliances give more established firms like Microsoft and Google access to some of the most popular and advanced AI systems. Startups like Anthropic, in turn, need funding and cloud-computing resources that a tech giant like Google can provide. In announcing the deal, Google said its cloud division would lend computing power and advanced AI chips that Anthropic plans to use to train and deploy its future AI products.
Anthropic’s language model assistant, Claude, hasn’t yet been released to the public, but the startup said it planned to expand access to the chatbot “in the coming months.”
The deal underscores Google’s commitment to AI, particularly in ways that may be expanded beyond the company’s core search business. “I’m excited by the AI-driven leaps we’re about to unveil in Search and beyond,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Thursday as the company reported fourth-quarter earnings. He said Google intended to release chatbots “in the coming weeks and months” and allow consumers to use such products “as a companion to search.”
