Google hosting Search and AI event next week

Google has announced that it’s hosting a Search and AI event on Wednesday, February 8. It comes as the company is gearing up to combat ChatGPT and other AI competitors.

Google says it’s “reimagining how people search for, explore and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need.” This will result in “greater access to information for people everywhere, through Search, Maps and beyond.” According to The Verge, Google will be “using the power of AI” to do those things.

The event — which has a YouTube livestream titled “Google presents : Live from Paris” — features artwork that also demonstrates Google Lens visual search and translation, as well as Shopping. It will take place at 2:30 p.m. CET (5:30 a.m. PT / 8:30 a.m. ET).

This is styled similarly to the company’s annual Search On events that are usually held every fall. However, this event comes as Microsoft is rumored to be integrating Open AI’s ChatGPT into Bing. Google’s announcements were originally expected to be at I/O 2023 (rumored to take place in May), but what’s happening next week appears to be greatly accelerated.

During this afternoon’s Alphabet Q4 2022 earnings call, Sundar Pichai said that “Very soon people will be able to interact directly with our newest, most powerful language models as a companion to Search in experimental and innovative ways.”

Other leaks have described how direct, chatbot-style answers are coming to Google Search.

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