During a time of extreme hardship for the tech giants, when their stocks have been falling for months, losing hundreds of billions of dollars in value and forcing them to lay off thousands of employees en masse, there is something new. What will be the new frontier of competition between tech giants seeking to dominate the AI ​​market.

Microsoft executives and engineers, along with a small partner, the OpenAI research lab, introduced a new Internet search engine, a new version of Bing, using next-generation artificial intelligence technology, during the week. A technology that many in the industry see as the key to the future. It was this artificial intelligence that excited millions of people two months ago when OpenAI introduced the ChatGPT application. The app in question generates artificial conversations and texts, academic articles, writes lyrics and answers questions, and can handle just about any topic you throw at it. Its potential is such that it has caused alarm in US universities, where professors are making plans for what assignments they will give their students and how they will check them when they are presented with assignments prepared by ChatGPT.

As noted in a related New York Times report, ChatGPT has given the tech industry a strong dose of excitement at a time when the industry is facing its worst wave of mass layoffs in at least 15 years. And Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said his company will integrate the new technology into its products and make it available to millions of people by the end of the month. The hype surrounding OpenAI technology, as well as competing Microsoft technologies that have either been or will be introduced soon, reminds tech veterans of other events that have revolutionized Silicon Valley since the introduction of the first iPhone and Google navigation. to Netscape. And Microsoft is failing to live up to its responsibility as its own web navigation engine, Bing, comes in second place and falls far behind Google. But it will be the one who will introduce the next great advancement in technology, if these kinds of applications, the so-called chatbots, and the artificial intelligence technology that powers them, prove to be worth the money.

Countless start-up companies are working on their own “creative AI” programs.

A day earlier, Google introduced its own sister app, “Bard” as it calls it, in an attempt to replicate and compete with the huge success of ChatGPT. Introducing Bard, Google gave an example of what he could do and asked him to explain what NASA’s telescope recently discovered in a way that would be interesting to a 9-year-old. Bard answered, and one of the first answers he gave was that in 2023, a NASA telescope discovered a number of galaxies and called them “green peas” because they are small, round, and green. A bard can plan a kid’s party, compare two Oscar-nominated films, or even suggest quick dinner ideas based on what’s in the fridge.

In the meantime, many other companies have entered the competitive race with related AI applications. Facebook parent company Meta has stepped up its own efforts to implement similar technologies embedded in various products, and together with it, countless startups are working on their own AI programs, the so-called “creative AI” that creates text and even performances. Yesterday, after all, it became known that the Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Baidu are in the same competition and are trying to compete with ChatGPT with their own application.