Alphabet to combine AI research units Google Brain, DeepMind

To compete with rivals like Microsoft in the AI race, Alphabet Inc is combining its two main artificial intelligence units in a major reshuffle. The new unit Google DeepMind would combine existing Brain and DeepMind research groups under the leadership of Demis Hassabis, the cofounder and current CEO of DeepMind. 

The teams that are being combined are said to have delivered a number of high profile projects including the transformer, technology that formed the bedrock of some of OpenAI’s own work. Similar to OpenAI’s latest model GPT-4, Alphabet will work on “multimodal” AI which can respond not only to text prompts but also to image inputs to generate new content. 

While Google has dominated the search market, with more than 80% market share, there are concerns that Alphabet could fall behind Microsoft in the AI race. Alphabet recently announced the launch of Bard to take on ChatGPT but lost $100 billion in value after Bard shared inaccurate information in a promotional video. The latest reshuffle aims to significantly accelerate Alphabet’s progress in AI.