Google Sets Date For February Event, Promises News On Search, AI, And Maps

There is no denying that ChatGPT has quickly become one of the most talked about topics of 2023. Several estimates reveal that January alone saw the chatbot rake more than 100 million users (via Engadget). Given that this growth rate is faster than the adoption rates of popular apps like Instagram and TikTok, Google's concerns about people considering the AI chatbot as a potential replacement for Google Search are genuine.

While Google was already working on a ChatGPT-like tool of its own, the fact that ChatGPT has beaten Google to launch a publicly usable platform has made Google's executives uncomfortable. It seems the company is refocusing as many resources as possible to deploy a ChatGPT alternative of its own in the not-too-distant future. 

In fact, the rising popularity of ChatGPT might just have prompted Google to announce its AI-focused initiatives earlier than initially planned. On February 2, 2023, Google confirmed that it would host an event on Wednesday, February 8, that will primarily focus on the company's Search and AI-related efforts.

While Google search remains the world's most dominant search engine by a comfortable margin, Alphabet seems to be wary of recent AI centric attempts made by Microsoft. Microsoft recently confirmed that it intends to integrate ChatGPT into its search engine Bing to offer consumers more intelligent search summaries and results. Given how popular AI-focused tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E have proven to be, there is a real fear among Google executives about the company missing out on the AI party.

Google has scheduled a YouTube livestream for the event, and in the official invites for the event sent to several publications, the company asserts that it intends to "use the power of AI to reimagine how people search for, explore and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need." Google also hinted at the likelihood of the event being mostly centered around its Search and Maps business.

The announcement of this launch event comes on the same day senior executives at Google discussed the company's AI-centric innovations at the company's quarterly earnings call. In the call, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that Google is making efforts to let people directly interact with its "newest, most powerful language models." Pichai also asserted that these tools would function as a companion to the company's already powerful search tools.

We still do not know if Google will announce such a tool at the event scheduled for next week. However, it is very unusual for Google to hold events like these in February, less than three months before the company's popular Google I/O developer conference. 

Google I/O has, for several years, been the company's go-to event for announcing major updates to its products and capabilities. Given that Google is unwilling to wait that long to announce its new Search and Maps initiatives, we presume it to be a product that is significant enough to warrant a launch event of its own.