Google ups the AI ante with investment in ChatGPT rival Anthropic

Google has ramped up its efforts to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT by investing in a rival generative AI startup.

Per financial times(Opens in a new tab)Google confirmed it has invested over $300 million for a 10% stake in Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company founded by former OpenAI employees. Google and Anthropic declined to reveal details about the investment, but in a separate statement, Anthropic announced(Opens in a new tab) partnered with Google Cloud to scale its AI computing systems.

OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, has quickly adopted generative AI conversation. Since the new application was released in December, it has been used by Tinder users to report matches, by students to write essays (i.e., to plagiarize), to write malware code, and in general for conversations about ethical use, copyright laws, and automation to stimulate work.

In January, Microsoft invested $10 billion in ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which is now rumored to eventually power Microsoft’s Bing search engine — a distant second behind Google’s search engine. The release of ChatGPT and subsequent popularity was enough for Google executives to declare a “Code Red.”(Opens in a new tab) for the New York Times.

Later this week (February 8), Google is hosting a Search and Maps-related event that has the internet speculating about some sort of ChatGPT-related announcement. The details of the announcement are not known, but the description of the event reads: “We are rethinking how people search for, explore and interact with information and make it more natural and intuitive than ever to find what.” you need.”

Regardless of what Google announces on Wednesday, it’s clear that the tech giant sees ChatGPT as a major threat.