According to a report from CNBC, Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted at the company’s year-end strategy meeting that the AI model behind Google Gemini is behind OpenAI and ChatGPT, but Gemini will surpass its rivals by 2025. He promised to seriously promote this.
Mr. Pichai’s directive appears to be more serious than the usual corporate rant. It’s a declaration that Google will no longer fall behind in the competition it once led. Google has seemingly endless cash and a huge infrastructure, so it has a good chance of rising to the top within 12 months, but that’s because the company is no longer resting on the laurels it’s been honing since the early 2000s.
“You don’t always have to be first in history, but you have to execute well and really be best-in-class as a product,” Pichai said at the conference. “I think that’s 2025.”
Pichai’s rallying cry certainly highlights the amount of pressure the company is under. Gemini has been touted as Google’s big hope for AI, but it has yet to live up to the hype. ChatGPT has become synonymous with generative AI, but Google’s Gemini still feels like a crappy stand-in. Sure, Pichai claims that Gemini 1.5 surpasses GPT in terms of technical capabilities, but let’s be real. Awareness is key.
The company’s advantage is at risk if the average user associates “AI” with ChatGPT instead of Google. Pichai is right that “you don’t always have to be first,” but Google’s late start is putting it at risk of losing its reputation as a pioneer.
Meanwhile, Meta is putting a lot of money into AI, with the Meta AI assistant coming across the company’s platforms and new hardware like AI-enhanced Ray-Ban smart glasses and Orion headsets. Masu. While Meta’s AI investments are impressive, its vast empire may actually limit the coherence of its strategy compared to Google’s plans with Gemini.
If Google had missed the mark, Apple would still be in bed when the starting gun went off. Still, Tim Cook and his colleagues have made some big moves to incorporate AI into their products. Apple has developed AI internally and partnered with AI developers, including OpenAI, while maintaining Apple’s unique user experience for Siri and other services. Apple’s strategy may seem overly cautious, but it’s not ignoring AI. If Apple can incorporate generative AI into its tightly integrated ecosystem, it could redefine what AI means to consumers.
What’s at stake here is more than bragging rights. The winners of the AI race will likely define the standards, tools, and platforms of the next decade. Google’s strategy to expand Gemini into a universal assistant could be the key to its success in the new year.
“I think 2025 is going to be a critical year,” Pichai said. “I think it’s really important to recognize the urgency of this moment, and we need to act faster as a company. The stakes are high. These are disruptive moments. In 2025, we… We need to be relentlessly focused on maximizing the benefits of this technology and solving real problems for our users.”
