Thanks for reading The Briefing, our nightly column where we break down the day’s news. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to our reporting here.
Greetings!
If you pay attention to one thing in AI this week, it should be Google’s I/O presentation on Tuesday. The tech giant unveiled a bunch of AI tools, most significantly the addition of new AI features such as agents to Google Search. Any distinction that existed between Google’s Gemini AI chatbot and its search bar is disappearing.
No longer should we compare OpenAI’s ChatGPT to Gemini—it’s ChatGPT versus Google Search. That’s a big deal, given that Search is much more widely used than Gemini—Google CEO Sundar Pichai intimated today that Search has 3 billion monthly users, while the Gemini chatbot had 900 million. (ChatGPT is bigger than Gemini, at least: Its user number has been hovering at a little over 900 million weekly active users for a while now.)
Turning Google Search into an AI chatbot means average people who might never click on Gemini are more likely to get exposed to a broader range of AI tools than has been the case so far. It’s hard to argue with Google Search chief Liz Reid’s statement on stage at I/O that the overhaul is Google’s biggest search box upgrade in 25 years.
One of the more striking new AI tools was the introduction of agents, such as an information agent that will let consumers ask Search to monitor and provide regular updates for things like stock prices, along very specific criteria. Another agent can monitor apartments you might want to rent. Those are the sort of things we all associate with agents already, to be sure. But having these features available in Google Search likely will increase their usage.
The business impact is sure to be significant. Search is, of course, Google’s cash cow, so the overhaul holds out the possibility that boosting its usage will also increase Google’s revenue. But there’s a cost to that: Just imagine how much more Google will have to spend to handle the increasingly complex AI-related searches that are likely to flood its servers. And exactly how Google will fit ads into more elaborate AI responses without turning people off is unclear.
What about the impact on competition? OpenAI may have a hard time growing ChatGPT once people realize Google search can do whatever ChatGPT can do. The same is even more true of others that have much to prove in AI, such as Meta Platforms. The array of new AI tools and features Google unveiled on Tuesday demonstrates how the tech giant may be hard to beat once it has overhauled all its products and services with its AI.
Move Over, Meta
Meta has made AI-powered smart glasses a thing in the past few years, thanks to its collaboration with Ray-Ban. But Meta will soon face some hefty competition, starting with Google this fall.
On Tuesday at I/O, the tech giant unveiled a couple of the designs coming this year from its collaborators, Warby Parker and South Korea’s Gentle Monster. Like the Meta Ray-Bans, the glasses will let wearers make phone calls, send texts, listen to music and take photos. They also will offer navigation and other less obviously useful functions, such as placing a coffee order on DoorDash via Gemini (surely it’s just easier to text, call or walk into a Starbucks).
Apple is reportedly working on its own smart glasses. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was early to this market, but his hold on it seems likely to slip.
In Other News
Google and Blackstone are teaming up to create a rival to neoclouds such as CoreWeave and Nebius, but one that will offer AI computing capacity powered by Google’s tensor processing units (more details here and here).
Google unveiled an expanded lineup of AI shopping tools Tuesday at its annual I/O developer conference, including a “Universal Cart” that allows users to add products from multiple retailers and sites across multiple Google products including search, Gmail, Gemini and YouTube.
Google DeepMind agreed to pay between $80 million and $90 million to hire employees from AI agent startup Contextual AI and to license its technology, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.
Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI and Tesla’s former director of AI, is joining Anthropic, he posted on X on Tuesday. “I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative,” he wrote.
Chipmaker Analog Devices is in advanced talks to buy startup Empower Semiconductor for about $1.5 billion, in a deal that reflects the demand for technology that can manage the intense energy needs of AI chips, The Information reported Monday.
Meta Platforms is making broader organizational changes along with impending mass layoffs to better suit its structure to AI, a top executive told staff on Monday. The owner of Facebook and Instagram plans to detail cuts on Wednesday to about a tenth of its nearly 78,000 employees.
Start your day with Applied AI, the newsletter from The Information that uncovers how leading businesses are leveraging AI to automate tasks across the board. Subscribe now for free to get it delivered straight to your inbox twice a week.
Join The Information's Anissa Gardizy as she discusses the global AI compute shortage with OpenAI’s Sachin Katti, Amp founder Anj Midha, and SemiAnalysis analyst Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros.
Save the date for The Information’s annual AI Agenda Live in San Francisco, where top AI researchers, founders, investors and executives come together for a day of conversations about the breakthroughs and applications shaping the future of AI.
Save the Date: The Information returns to Napa Valley October 27-28 to convene senior women across tech, media, and finance. The event will feature two days of intimate, candid conversations with the leaders navigating today’s global shifts.
