Sundar Pichai bets big on infusing AI in Google Search engine

Facing a tough competition from AI-powered Microsoft Bing, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced to unlock the full potential of AI into its Search engine.

Pichai said the company will unlock "entirely new experiences in Search and beyond" just as camera, voice and translation technologies have all opened entirely new categories of queries and exploration.

"For years, we've been focused on making Search even more helpful, from Google Lens to multi-Search to visual exploration in Search, immersive view in Maps, Google Translate, to all the language models powering Search today, we have used AI to open up access to knowledge in powerful ways," Pichai told analysts during the company's March quarter earnings call.

He said that guided by data and years of experience about what people want, the company will test and iterate "as we go because we know that billions of people trust Google to provide the right information".

In March, Google introduced an experimental conversational AI service called Bard.

It has since added its PaLM (Pathways Language) model to make it even more powerful and Bard can now help people with programming and software development tasks, including code generation, and lots more to come, informed Pichai.

For developers, the company has released PaLM API alongside its new MakerSuite tool.

"We are proud to have world-class research teams who have been advancing the breakthroughs underpinning this new era of AI. Last week, I announced that we are bringing together the Brain Team in Google Research and DeepMind into one unit," the Google CEO informed.