Google Says AI ‘Not a Race’ as Microsoft Launches Upgrades Across Its Platform

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is having its major go-to-market phase shift moment.

The technology and its revolutionary capabilities have already spurred a profound change in how end-users access and activate information, as well as the way people more broadly use the internet and interact across data-rich environments, with millions using AI to boost their creativity and improve productivity.

And the companies bringing AI to market aren’t stopping now.

Microsoft, which is licensing AI technology, including the buzzy ChatGPT solution, from the unicorn startup OpenAI, announced Tuesday (May 23) the company will launch AI integrations across its full Windows 11 platform, including the firm’s most important software products.

The new AI integration into Windows 11, called Windows Copilot, will become available in June, announced company executives at the annual Microsoft Build conference, which ends this Thursday (May 25).

It makes Windows 11 the first PC platform to announce centralized AI assistance across its suite of both consumer and enterprise software products.

Meanwhile, across the Big Tech aisle, Alphabet and Google CEO and Charmain Sundar Pichai penned an Op-Ed in the Financial Times Tuesday, claiming that “building AI responsibly is the only race that really matters.”

See also: Why Generative AI Is a Bigger Threat to Apple Than Google or Amazon

Fervor Around Generative AI Integrations Grows

“While some have tried to reduce this moment to just a competitive AI race, we see it as so much more than that,” Pichai wrote. “At Google, we’ve been bringing AI into our products and services for over a decade and making them available to our users. We care deeply about this. Yet, what matters even more is the race to build AI responsibly and make sure that as a society we get it right.”

Given how many enterprise operations, as well as day-to-day consumer touchpoints, have significant software components, generative AI will impact, at least in some manner, how businesses engage with their customers and how they compete with each other, particularly in marketplaces where speed to discovery can give a firm an edge.

Competitive race or not, Microsoft is certainly trying to narrow what industry observers believe may be a perceived gap around its capabilities relative to Alphabet’s Google.

Read also: Google Unveils New AI Suite in Latest Salvo With Microsoft

Chief among Microsoft’s key changes to its AI integrations is the rollout of real-time search results between Bing and ChatGPT.

Originally, ChatGPT’s answers to prompts were limited to information up to 2021 — but now, ChatGPT can pull from live Bing web results to answer its subscribers’ queries.

Microsoft’s expansive launch this week also included the capability for businesses themselves to build plug-ins connecting to Microsoft 365 Copilot, its AI assistant for enterprises, across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more software solutions.

Microsoft aims to let companies configure their own AI copilots more broadly, for example by building a plug-in that works across OpenAI’s large language model (LLM), Microsoft 365’s software suite, and the end-user’s personal data, including calendar, emails, chats, documents, contacts and meetings.

This access will allow the tool to reply to real-time prompts using natural language processing (NLP), as well as complete tasks like booking travel or explaining legal minutiae within vendor contracts.

Echoing this sentiment, Andrew Gleiser, chief revenue officer at payments provider Aeropay, told PYMNTS that one use case he sees for generative AI is integrating it into merchant payment portals to surface compliant information to customers around their own best clients as it relates to metrics, including average order value, overall volume and purchase cadence.

Not to be outdone, in a Google Marketing Live event Tuesday, Google introduced its own new tool named Product Studio. The new product aims to streamline the creation of unique product imagery for merchants by using the power of generative AI.

See also: A US Regulatory Agency Just for AI? It Could Happen

Taking Steps to Mitigate AI’s Potentially Harmful Effects

AI presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and lawmakers around the world are taking notice of its ability for abuse.

Both Microsoft and Google have pledged to demarcate AI-produced content to help consumers determine what is real and what is AI-generated.

Google has also published an AI Policy Agenda that outlines the company’s vision for the “responsible race,” Pichai emphasized. The agenda largely ignores open-source AI and focuses on limiting restraints on innovation.

“AI is too important not to regulate, and too important not to regulate well,” Google’s white paper explained.