Microsoft vs Google - who will win?

In today’s email:

• Google Bard: Google’s response to Opena AI + Microsoft

• Microsoft’s Bing with OpenAI’s GPT-4: Launching today?

• Quickfire: Shopify and Baidu add AI

• Google Dreamix: Hollywood blockbuster with no CGI needed?

Google Bard

After what seems like an eternity, Google has finally publicly come out with their ChatGPT competitor: Google Bard

Google has recently launched a new AI search technology called "BARD", which is an acronym for "Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers". This technology is aimed at improving the search results provided by Google by better understanding the relationships between the words in a search query and the documents being searched. The idea behind BARD is to provide a better understanding of the context in which the words in a query are being used, which will lead to improved search results. (link to their blog post)

This is their long-awaited response to Open AI’s partnership with Microsoft. And like Microsoft’s Bing, Google will add “BARD” to the Google Search Engine, as well as its suite of tools (Google Docs, Sheets, etc.). These new AI features will begin rolling out on Google Search soon.

It seems like Google has been investing and working on AI for ages, but with little to show for it. All it took was for Microsoft to add a competitive advantage to their Bing Search Engine to ignite a fire and ship a product.

Our take: With these integrations, it’s clear that we will be interacting with AI daily. Everyone will, in time. Google will add Bard to Android phones and this will lead to voice control adoption. As search engines serve us the answers directly, SEO will take a huge hit (anyone creating a fund to short companies relying on Search Engine traffic?)

Microsoft Bing + GPT today?

Just a few days before Google’s Bard announcement, Microsoft started deploying Open AI’s GPT into their Bing Search. They are holding an “event” today, where they are expected to officially announce the relaunch of their search engine.

We are witnessing a heavyweight fight in real-time. May the odds be in their favor!

Up until recently, it would have been foolish to question Google’s “monopoly” on search. But the rules have changed. And they’ve changed fast. It’s also clear Satya Nadella wants to be “the first”.

We’ve seen a preview of how Microsoft has implemented GPT into their search and to me, it seems like it’s the right way: simple, but not a huge change. You still get the search you are used to, but if you move up in the browser, you can ask your questions that AI will answer.

Our take: seeing the previews from Microsoft and Google, it seems that the answers they provide are quite simple. This makes sense because generating AI responses is expensive. So the search engine results will not disappear, but low-quality websites will take a huge hit.

Microsoft is making huge plays in AI, enterprise, gaming, cloud…

Quickfire news:

• Shopify AI

Shopify has added a native Open AI integration into Shopify Flow.

This is huge for Ecom, being able to do everything inside of Shopify.

• Baidu adds a GPT-Style AI bot

Baidu (a Chinese Search Engine that gets around 5 Billion visits per month) has ALSO added a GPT-Style AI bot to their search engine. And their stock has surged after this announcement (+13% today). Link

Google Dreamix:

Last week, we looked into Google’s MusicLM. Yesterday, Google released Dreamix - more than just an AI editor.

I suggest you look at their post, as it’s difficult to portray just how good some of the output is. Given a single image, a video is created based on text input. If a video is taken as a source, Dreamix can change the output of the video (for example, adding fire to a field).

Image generation, Music generation, and now we have Video generation. Does this mean the end of 3D CGI in movies? Maybe not yet, but this will give even more freedom to creators. “Prompt engineer” is going to be an in-demand job in the near future.

That’s it for today’s email. We're looking forward to Microsoft’s event today. We’ll be sure to share everything in an upcoming email.

PS: If you are working on an AI product, I’d love to test it out!