Google: What ChatGPT? ‘AI has been a part of Google search for years’

Internet search means Google for most of us. And so has been the case since over two decades now. However, the advent of AI-powered chat botChatGPT in December 2022 has made many belive that search game has changed. However, the company’s global policy chief Kent Walker told news agency AFP that Google still retains its position as king of the search engines and that the company had the edge over its AI competitors.
Walker played down the idea that viral AI chatbots like ChatGPT could challenge Google’s crown. “It’s important to realise that AI is far more than just a chatbot,” he reportedly said in an interview in Malaga, southern Spain. Google is opening its biggest European cybersecurity centre in the country.
He said that anyone who had used Google Maps, Translate, Gmail or search recently had been benefitting from AI. “We’ve been using AI to power search for a dozen years,” he said. He added, “We’re finding new ways to use generative AI tools to expand the different ways people can search.”
A Google veteran, Walker joined the company in 2006 and heads its legal and policy teams, chose his words carefully on AI’s potential to upend the search engine market. “I would say the rise of AI chatbots accelerated our work and expanded popular acceptance of AI in a more visible way, and we have doubled down on our work,” he said. He also expressed a caution about depending too much on AI chatbots. “It’s always a balance because some of these new AI tools are not always as accurate as traditional search,” he told the news agency.
He further said, “So we need to make sure to use our traditional experience in search to ground the results in accurate, authoritative information.” Walker added, “So we are blending AI into search — what we call a search generative experience — to have the best of both worlds.” “We hope the court will agree with this,” he said. “We’ll probably find out in the spring of next year.”